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 novels Tetched (Behler Publications) and Roughhouse (Kaya Press), Both books were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award; Tetched was chosen as one of the best books reviewed in 2006 by Chronogram magazine. His stories and poems have been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize.

His work is anthologized in Up Is Up, but So Is Down: The New York Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images and other collections. His stories have appeared in American Letters and Commentary, Crowd, CutBank, Faultline, Fiction, Fiction International, Global City Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Laurel Review, Pleiades and other magazines.

He teaches fiction writing at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York and has taught at Pace University, the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the Asian American Writers Workshop. He received a grant to appear in the Neal Cross Lecture Series at the University of Northern Colorado and was a visiting writer at St. Lawrence University. He has been a resident at Yaddo, MacDowell and other colonies. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Daily News and other papers.

He is a one-time winner of the Poetry Versus Comedy slam at the Bowery Poetry Club, the Syracuse poetry slam, and the Nuyorican Poets Caf Friday slam. He was selected to read in the former home of East German President Erich Honecker in Berlin.

He lives in Manhattan with his wife and daughter.