Ruth Ann Dailey writes columns for the Post-Gazette's Monday Metro edition and for its Thursday zone editions, and composes local-interest Sunday crosswords as "The Pittsburgh Puzzler."

Dailey is a classical pianist by training and a gospel pianist by birth, playing keyboards at her minister father's large Baptist church from the age of 12. She earned a Bachelor of Music degree at the University of Maryland-College Park in 1984, studying on a National Merit Scholarship, a Chancellor's Scholarship and the Theodore Presser Music Scholarship. She continued graduate work in chamber music in Lyon, France, with a Rotary Foundation International Scholarship.

The music education led to a budding journalism career when she became a concert reviewer and features writer in Erie, Pa., in 1988, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Saginaw (Mich.) News a year later. Her essays and articles have since been printed in National Review, Gramophone and other magazines.

Dailey spent several years as a radio talk show host in Pittsburgh and Erie. She joined WQED's "On Q" talk show in 2001 and now appears with the usual suspects on "Off Q" every Friday night.

Dailey lives on Pittsburgh's North Side, where she is turning a 100 year-old shoe polish factory into a home and a mechanic's parking lot into a city garden. With the help of her husband, three children and beagle, the project's targeted completion date will probably coincide with its bicentennial.