RALPH McINERNY holds degrees from the St. Paul Seminary, the University of Minnesota, and Laval University. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame since 1955 and, since 1978, has been the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies. For seven years, he was director of the Medieval Institute; since 1979, he has been director of the Jacques Maritain Center, also at the University of Notre Dame. He has published extensively as a scholar and as a fiction writer. His publications include The Question of Christian Ethics, Aquinas on Human Action, and a biography, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain. His Gifford Lectures, delivered in 1999-2000, were published under the title Characters in Search of Their Author. He is the author of the Father Dowling mysteries, the most recent of which is Blood Ties (2005), the Andrew Broom mysteries, the Sister Mary Teresa mysteries, and Irish Gilt (2005), the latest of a series of mysteries set at the University of Notre Dame. Ralph McInerny is a fellow of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, a recipient of the Bouchercon Lifetime Achievement Award, and a member of President Bush's Committee on the Arts and Humanities
