Born and raised in Washington, D.C., William O. Tyler is a graduate of the Literary Media program at Duke Ellington School of the Arts and earned his degree in Visual Communications from American University, with a minor in Critical Cinema. Originally intending to become a filmmaking, his storyboarding turned into comic making as he had always been a fan of both comics and film.

In 2004, just after college, William debuted his first comic, The Goth Queen Needs a Mate. In it, he began exploring the themes of love and death that would become recurring in his work. His other comics include Ratboy, based on the late David Paul Brown, Cinephilia, a deep dive into his love of film and how the artform moves in tandem with society, and Fairies Tell.

William is currently working on titles Siren.0 and Anxious Ax, exploring aspects of Black and queer life through horror stories.

William's work has appeared in projects from Patrick Fillion's Class Comics, Tim Sale's Young Bottoms in Love, Tommy Roddy's Pride High and more.

William has also been the editor of various anthology projects including the short-run series Queerbait from Carabosse Comics, the queer horror anthology Theater of Terror: Revenge of the Queers from Northwest Press alongside Justin Hall, and the queer erotic anthology Yellow is the Warmest Color from Trash Panda Fun Zone alongside Sonya Saturday. He is currently editing the queer Black anthology We Belong from Stacked Deck Press alongside Viktor Kerney.

After collaborating with his partner Dave Davenport on a couple of projects, they decided to create Tannis Comix and self-publish together.

In 2018, William's webcomic Cinephilia was picked up by Perception Studio to become a live-streamed, interactive movie talk show on Twitch, which he also co-hosts with Art Vega. The show has run for over 150 episodes.

As a media critic, William's thoughts have been shared various places including panel discussions at San Diego Comic Con, WonderCon, and LA Comic Con among other events, on podcasts such as The Whole Movie Podcast's season focusing on The Neon Demon with Jordan Crucchiola and Roxana Hadadi, and Midnight Mass with Michael Varrati and Peaches Christ, and Fangoria.

William has served on the screening committee for New York's queer film festival NewFest, as well as a judge at the North Bend Film Festival. As a literary judge, he has also helped to choose winners for the prestigious Lambda Literary awards as well as for the Prism Comics awards.