Thaddeus Rutkowski

Thaddeus Rutkowski was born in Kingston, Pennsylvania, and later moved to and was raised in Hublersburg, Pennsylvania. He is the son of a Polish-American father and Chinese-American mother. He is a graduate of Cornell University and the Johns Hopkins University.

Rutkowski has taught at Medgar Evers College. He is a member of the rag-tag literary collective, The Unbearables. He is also on the editorial board of Many Mountains Moving, a literary journal.

Rutkowski is the author of three novels. The first, Roughhouse: A Novel in Snapshots was released by Kaya Press in 1999, the second, Tetched: A Novel in Fractals, was released by Behler Publications in 2005, and the third, Haywire, was released by Stacherone Books in 2010. He also wrote Violent Outbursts, a collection of Flash Fiction (Spuyten Duvil 2015) of which John Amen writing in the Los Angeles Review said, "Rutkowski mines the confessional approach, everyday occurrences, and the fantastical, displaying thematic and stylistic range, with most of the pieces in this collection totaling less than five hundred words in length....".

In 2017, he was named a panelist by the New York Foundation for the Arts on the committee to select the foundation's non-fiction literature awardees. Rutkowski has contributed to the Opinionator column of the New York Times online.

He is a former Nuyorican Poets Cafe Poetry Slam champion. His work has appeared in the The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, the International Herald Tribune, Potomac Review, Iron Horse Review and Hayden's Ferry Review.

Rutkowki lives in New York City with his wife and daughter.

Kirkus Reviews in its take on Rutkowski's collection of Fast Fiction Violent Outburts summarizes the work in the reviews closing sentence in declaring ..."Insouciant, twee, and aphoristic, Rutkowski’s voice handily skewers stupidity".

In writing on Rutkowski's third novel Haywire, Publishers Weekly wrote that "unlike a lot of flash fiction, which tends to be built around a conceit or written toward a punch line, Rutkowski's best moments crackle unimpeded by self-consciousness.

Peter Selgin in writing about Rutkowski's work in American Book Review said, "Anyone who has had the pleasure of reading one of Thaddeus Rutkowski's books, in reading another, will know what he's in for: the mock-picaresque misadventures of a Chinese/Polish American son delivered in a deadpan style reminiscent of nothing so much as (for those old enough to remember) Jackie Vernon's "Vacation Slide Show" shtick on The Ed Sullivan Show".... .

Novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner Allison Lurie wrote that Rutkowski was "one of the most original writers in America today" John Barth has called Rutkowski's fiction ..."tough and funny and touching and harrowing"....

In 2012, Rutkowski was awarded a fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Also in 2012, his book Haywire was named Best Fiction by the Asian American Literary Award.