Verlyn Flieger is a world-renowned expert on J.R.R. Tolkien, a CatholicU alumna, and a professor-emerita of English at the University of Maryland at College Park, where she taught courses on Tolkien, Medieval literature and comparative mythology. For several decades, she contributed to the field of Tolkien critical studies through her research, writing, and editorial work. For her hard work and achievements in this field, she was awarded the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inkling Studies three times (in 1997, 2002, and 2013).

Author of:

• Splintered light: logos and language in Tolkien's world, 1983 (2nd. ed., 2002) 
• A question of time: J.R.R. Tolkien's road to faërie, 1997
• Interrupted music: the making of Tolkien's mythology, 2005 
• Green suns and faërie: essays on Tolkien, 2012 
• There would always be a fairy-tale: more essays on Tolkien, 2017 

Editor of:

• Tolkien's legendarium: essays on the History of Middle-earth, 2000 (with C.F. Hostetter)  
• Tolkien, J.R.R., Smith of Wootton Major, 2005 
• Tolkien on fairy stories, 2008 (with D.A. Anderson)  
• (ed.) The story of Kullervo, 2016 
• (ed.) Lay of Aotrou and Itroun, 2016 

Co-founder and editor of Tolkien studies: an annual scholarly review, 2004- (with D.A. Anderson and M.D.C. Drout)

Contributor of multiple essays to collective works

Many of these books are available in the Mullen Library General Stacks
or accessible at Rare Books (Special Collections) Some of them are recent gifts to the Catholic University Libraries.