Eckhard Gerdes was born in 1959 in Atlanta, Georgia, and has lived in Switzerland, Germany, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Katanga, the Republic of South Africa, as well as in several locations throughout the United States in Illinois, Georgia, Iowa, Alaska, and California.
He earned his MFA in Fiction Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Perhaps best known for his novels, his work reflects experimental technique, sometimes ignoring time, space, or cause-and-effect, in the service of stories of individuals struggling to transcend fear and limitation.
His critical work on modern and post-modern literature has appeared in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, the American Book Review, and, recently, has included a chapter on the writing of his friend Raymond Federman in Jeffrey R. DiLeo's collection Federman's Fictions (SUNY Press, 2011).
Gerdes is also the editor of the Journal of Experimental Fiction and publisher of its associated press, JEF Books.