Born in Port Jefferson Station, New York, one year after the beginning of the Summer of Love, John Popielaski attended SUNY-Stony Brook and American University. He has worked as a mover, lackey to a well-heeled tropical biologist, tent erector, lobsterman, and teacher. He has lived in Connecticut for twenty years.

A minor poet who, for such biographies, is not above referring to himself in the third person, he has had work in such journals as The Hollins Critic, New South, Post Road, and Redivider.

His first novel, The Hollow Middle, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2018.