AustLit

John Rapsey was artistic director of the Niagara College Theatre Centre, Canada, between 1976 and 1986, and wrote a number of plays including Babel (1972), Clanaduck Clown Circus (1975), Frankenstein (1980), White Death (1982), and Imaginary Marriage (1983). Since coming to Australia, he has been a successful freelance scriptwriter and Director of the WA Screen Academy at Edith Cowan University. Rapsey began as a sessional lecturer in the early 1990s and joined the university full time in 1998 as a senior lecturer in the School of Communications and Multimedia.

With his brother David Rapsey, Rapsey was co-creator of the Channel 10 series Haydaze and then went on to be part of the design team for Ship to Shore and to create the teen series Sweat for the ABC and Channel 10. Rapsey was also series creator for the children's program Foreign Exchange, a joint effort between Channel 9 and Ireland's national broadcaster, RTE. He worked as a script editor on Raw FM and produced an anthology series of twenty short films for the Arena Channel called In Bed with Desire.

Rapsey was shortlisted for the Premier's Book Awards (Script category) and nominated as WA Citizen of the Year in Arts and Entertainment.