Matt Ruff was born in New York City in 1965. He decided he wanted to be a writer at the age of five and spent his childhood and adolescence teaching himself to tell stories. He wrote his first published novel, Fool on the Hill, while a student at Cornell University. Ruff is known for writing in a wide variety of genres; his novels have won numerous awards and earned him a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His novel Lovecraft Country was adapted as an HBO series by Misha Green, Jordan Peele, and J.J. Abrams, and his novel Bad Monkeys is currently in development as a film to star Margot Robbie. Ruff lives in Seattle with his wife, Lisa Gold.