John Repp is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, book critic, folk photographer, voracious reader, baseball crank, film noir devotee, music fanatic, collector of ephemera (especially family and found snapshots), and aficionado of Civil War and Reconstruction history, mental hygiene classroom films, Depression-era documentary photography, 1950s/60s American and Japanese popular culture, and the cultural history of the lands bordering Delaware Bay, especially the "black towns" of southern New Jersey and the pre-Revolutionary settlements along the Cohansey River. A native of the Pine Barrens region, he grew up along the Blackwater Branch of the Maurice River and later lived in northern New Hampshire, Michigan's Lower Peninsula, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Crawford Township before settling in Erie, Pennsylvania in 2000 with his wife, visual artist Katherine Knupp, and son, martial artist Dylan Repp. 

Before landing his first full-time teaching position in 1986, Repp worked as a retail clerk, gravedigger, billing supervisor, groundskeeper, egg packer, house painter, storekeeper, export clerk, data processor, woodcutter, typist-for-hire, freelance editor, and part-time university instructor. From the fall of 1991 until retiring in August, 2020, he taught writing at Edinboro University.