John Caleb Carpin was born in Richmond, Virginia. After undergraduate studies at Virginia Polytechnic and State University in philosophy and astronomy, he moved back to his hometown. In 2025 he and his comrades won the Virginia Dance Awards Outstanding Collaboration category for "Prose as Dance, Dance as Prose," a multi-medium prose/dance/musical performance. When Caleb isn’t writing he’s avoiding motorists on his bicycle, looking at pawpaw fruits and redwing blackbirds down by the river, or experiencing the bodily reality of p = mv at the local metal show.