Self-portrait
John Pappas (born John Joseph Pappas, August 14, 1974, North Adams, Massachusetts, U.S.A.), American high school language arts teacher, musician, and poet. His longer poetry has twice been selected for the Mayor of Boston’s Poetry Contest (2016 and 2020). In 2023 his haiku garnered a Touchstone Award for Individual Poems from The Haiku Foundation, a Trailblazer Haiku Award, the Silver Award in the 2023 Ito En New Haiku Grand Prix competition, the Top Win in the United States Division of the 2023 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Haiku Invitational, and a Haiku Honorable Mention in the 2024 Heliosparrow Haiku Frontier Awards, among other honors. Pappas’s chapbook Dimes of Light was published by Yavanika Press in 2024, and in the same year he was a featured poet in Off the Main Road: Six Contemporary Haiku Writers from Alba Publishing. As drummer and lyricist of the punk rock band Heather Hates You, he has recorded two albums and toured extensively. Pappas resides in Boston, Massachusetts.
Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.