John Repp

A native of the Pine Barrens region of southern New Jersey, John Repp has lived for many years in northwestern Pennsylvania. A voracious reader since devouring Fun With Dick and Jane in the first grade, he still loves nothing more than wallowing in a book. He debuted as a writer at age nine, composing with his mother’s black fountain pen an Alamo-esque epic in which a plucky band of French Legionnaires slaughters most of a Saracen army before meeting its inevitable doom. The next summer, his authorial career continued with a tale modeled on the baseball novels of John R. Tunis and typed on the family’s venerable Underwood.

Before landing his first full-time teaching position in 1986, Repp worked as a gravedigger, groundskeeper, house-painter, storekeeper, retail clerk, typist-for-hire, egg-packer, billing manager, woodcutter, export clerk, and part-time university instructor. He began publishing in literary periodicals in 1979 and has since seen into print eighteen collections, as well as over 400 individual poems, short stories, essays, and book reviews.