Nikos Piperis attended elementary school in his village of Karnezeika, in the province of Nafplio, Greece. He completed high school in Nafplio in 1955, and the following year emigrated to Australia. For his first two years in Australia he worked in factories, then began studying mechanical engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in 1958. He graduated in 1964 with an Associate Diploma in Mechanical Engineering, then worked for nine years at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation. In 1973 he moved with his family to Greece with the intention of settling there, but they returned a year later to Melbourne. From 1974 he has been a member of staff at the government ordinance factory in Maribyrnong.
Piperis has published poetry in Greece and Australia. His first published poem was in a Nafplio newspaper in 1955. In Australia, some of his poems have been published in the newspaper Pyrsos and the periodical Ikoyenia, and short stories have appeared in the newspaper Neos Kosmos. Piperis has also been involved in the Greek Language Writers of Melbourne project, a project led by Greek photographer, Costas Athanassiou, in conjunction with the RMIT Australian-Greek Resource and Learning Centre.
Major source: George Kanarakis Greek Voices in Australia: A Tradition of Prose, Poetry and Drama (1987).
