He was also a staff writer on ‘Cracker’,’ Key West’, among others and wrote episodes for HBO’s ‘War Stories’.
John was awarded the 1986 Drama Logue Award for Outstanding Writing for “The Dream Coast,” which was performed at the Mark Taper Forum Too Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Also in 1986 his play, “The Shaper,” was performed in a Humana Festival production at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.Steppling became a founding member of the Padua Hills Playwrights Workshop and Festival in 1978 along with Murray Mednick and Sam Shepard. Steppling remained involved in Padua for most of its 17-year existence. During that time he mentored Jon Robin Baitz (‘Other Desert Cities’).  John’s other plays include ‘Standard of the Breed’, ‘The Thrill’, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, ‘Dogmouth’, and ‘Phantom Luck’, which won the 2010 LA Award for best play. A collection of his plays was published in 1999 by Sun & Moon Press as ‘Sea of Cortez and Other Plays’. He lives with wife Gunnhild Skrodal Steppling; they divide their time between Norway and the high desert of southern California. He is artistic director of the theatre collective Gunfighter Nation. His book ‘Aesthetic Resistance and Dis-Interest. That Which Will not Allow Itself to be Said’ can be found at  http://mimesisinternational.com/aesthetic-resistance-and-dis-interest-that-which-will-not-allow-itself-to-be-said/

He is a two time NEA recipient, Rockefeller Fellow in theatre, and PEN-West winner for playwriting. His plays have been produced in LA, NYC, SF, Louisville, and at universities across the US, as well in Warsaw, Lodz, Paris, London and Krakow and he has taught screenwriting and curated the cinematheque for five years at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland. Steppling has noted that his upbringing moving from neighborhood to neighborhood in L.A with a family at the fringe of the film industry influenced his work, in particular, The Dream Coast. His experiences of the “seamy underside” of Los Angeles influenced the characters in his plays, which often concern the marginalized of American society. He maintains a blog and is a frequent interviewee on Press TV where he comments on international politics.  He has recently become the proud father of two twin boys.