Theodore Gracyk was born in San Rafael, California, and received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of California, Davis. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at Minnesota State University Moorhead and (since 2013) the co-editor of The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He is the author of four philosophical books on music and has authored numerous articles on the aesthetics of music and the history of aesthetics. He was co-recipient of the 2002 Woody Guthrie Award (the 2002 IASPM/US Book Award) for "I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity." With Andrew Kania, he co-edited The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music (2011). He has been a department chair, an acting college dean, and from 2011 to 2015, he served as President of the Faculty at his university. He maintains a web page at http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/