Thaddeus Rutkowski grew up in central Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Cornell University and the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the fiction collection Violent Outbursts (Spuyten Duyvil) and the novels Haywire (Starcherone/Dzanc), Tetched (Behler Publications) and Roughhouse (Kaya Press). All three novels were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award, and Haywire won the Members' Choice Award, given by members of the Asian American Writers Workshop in New York.

Haywire reached No. 1 on Small Press Distribution's fiction best-seller list. Tetched was chosen as one of the best books reviewed in 2006 by Chronogram magazine. He is a one-time winner of the Nuyorican Poets Café Friday slam, the Poetry Versus Comedy slam at the Bowery Poetry Club, and the Syracuse poetry slam. He was selected to read in the former home of East German President Erich Honecker in Berlin. He has been a featured reader in Budapest, Dublin, Hong Kong, London, Paris and Singapore, as well as in a number of U.S. cities.