John C. Hampsey is a Professor of Romantic and Classical Literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he has won the University Distinguished Teaching Award. Previously, he taught at Boston University and MIT. He received his BA from Holy Cross College and his PhD from Boston College.

Hampsey’s book, Paranoia and Contentment: A Personal Essay on Western Thought (hardback 2004, University of Virginia Press) won enthusiastic endorsements from fellow writers Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Tim O’Brien. O’Brien judged Paranoia and Contentment to be “sharply reasoned and intellectually bold . . . This beautifully written book turns upside down our standard thinking about creativity, imagination, and what it is to be wholly human.” Paranoia and Contentment was the first book to view paranoia in a positive light, and to use the concept to re-examine Western thought.

Hampsey's memoir Kaufman's Hill (hardback 2015, Bancroft Press) is the "best book written on American boyhood in decades," according to the renowned historian Howard Zinn. Kaufman's Hill focuses on the twilight years between 1961and 1968, between the fading culture of the 1950s and the full-on cultural revolution of the late 1960s. In fact, each chapter of Kaufman's Hill has a key scene at twilight. The success of Kaufman's Hill led to a second printing, a national tour of readings, and the book's development into a screenplay for possible film development.

His latest work, Soda Lake, will release in hardback in October 2025, with an international book tour to follow.

During his career, Hampsey has had more than thirty stories and essays published in such places as The Gettysburg Review (four times), The Midwest Quarterly, Antioch Review, The Alaska Quarterly, The Boston Globe, Arizona Quarterly, European Romantic Review, Witness, Colby Quarterly, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and McNeese Review, among many others.

Hampsey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and now lives in San Luis Obispo, California. He is a Professor in the English Department for California Polytechnic State University, teaching undergraduate and graduate seminars including British Romanticism, Classical Greece, and the Existential Tradition.