John Repp was born to John W. Repp, Sr. and Maxine Joy Rettinger Repp on February 18, 1953, in Vineland, New Jersey. After graduating from Vineland High School, he attended Penn State, Rutgers University, and Cumberland County College. In 1977, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in literature and creative writing from Franconia College. He completed a Master of Arts in creative writing from Central Michigan University in 1980 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985.

Since his first publication in a 1979 issue of Small Pond Magazine, Repp’s poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews, photographs, and digital collages have been published in many anthologies, magazines, journals, and newspapers (both in print and online), including The Bedford Introduction to Literature, Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race, Poetry, Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Journal. Along with twelve chapbooks of poetry, he has also published five books: Thirst Like This (1990), The Fertile Crescent (2004), Gratitude (2005), Fat Jersey Blues (2014), and The Soul of Rock & Roll: Poems Acoustic, Electric & Remixed, 1980-2020 (2021). His collections of short fiction are The Old West (and Other Tales) (2001) and Heart of Joy (2009). As editor, he published a textbook entitled How We Live Now: Contemporary Multicultural Literature (1992). Repp’s work has been honored with many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in 1987, the Devins Award in Poetry in 1989, and the Akron Poetry Prize in 2014. He has also received many residency fellowships at artist colonies such as Yaddo, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, Wildacres, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation.

Repp’s poetry centers on family, history, geography, friendship, music, and food. "Out the Window," a poem that appears in Thirst Like This (1990), provides an example from early in his career. The poem describes a simple scene unfolding outside the speaker's window that prompts memories of his mother, the phrasing’s parallel structure building a rhythm that embodies the increasing emotional intensity of the images:

A woman unloads groceries this blinding Saturday.
Her son-coatless, curly-headed, maybe ten- hugs a bag
and shuffles toward the house. She yells, throws her thick
arms up, grabs two bags and strides after him, her violet
shirt flapping. It's damned cold out there, yet these two
ferry groceries as if it were summer, as if it were all
that mattered. I'm reminded how much everything meant
to my mother, even the green glass pitcher,
even a boot fastened wrong, even one Sunday missed...

Repp lives in Erie with his wife, visual artist Katherine Knupp, and their son, martial artist Dylan Repp. He is always working on various projects in multiple genres, reading like a maniac, and inhaling music, films, and visual art.