Theme: Creation and Imagination Keynote speaker: Daniel McInerny
Daniel McInerny is a novelist and dramatist as well as associate professor and chair of the philosophy department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Va. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Notre Dame (1986) and his Ph.D. in philosophy from The Catholic University of America (1994). He has taught at Christendom College since the fall of 2019.
In March 2023 he published a novel, "The Good Death of Kate Montclair" (Chrism Press), which fellow Catholic novelist Maya Sinha has called “an instant classic of 21st-century Catholic fiction.”
"The Good Death of Kate Montclair" depicts a brave woman in midlife struggling to come to terms with a terminal diagnosis by joining an apparently innocent death discussion group. It is a suspenseful, heartbreaking, topical, and often humorous story set in Washington, D.C./Northern Virginia during COVID Year 2020, with flashbacks to the Italy of the 1980s, told from Kate Montclair's present tense POV. The book deals with one of our culture's most hotly contested issues, euthanasia, as well as with the themes of conscience as an argument for God’s existence, and bespoke spirituality and ritual in our contemporary world.
McInerney’s substack
More details and call for papers coming soon.