Ada Palmer is an author of science fiction and fantasy, a historian, and a composer. Her first science fiction series "Terra Ignota" (published by Tor Books) mixes Enlightenment-era philosophy with traditional science fiction speculation to bring to life the year 2454, not a perfect future, but a utopian one, threatened by cultural upheaval. Ada Palmer studies the long-term evolution of ideas and the history of religious radicalism, science, and freethought, especially in the Italian Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Classical Greece and Rome. She teaches in the History Department at the University of Chicago, and did her Ph.D. at Harvard University. She composes close harmony folk music with mythological, science fiction and fantasy themes, and performs with the a cappella group Sassafrass. She also studies the history of manga anime, especially the "God of Manga" Osamu Tezuka, blogs for Tor.com and writes the history/philosophy blog ExUrbe.com.

Shannon Page was born on Halloween night and spent her early years on a back-to-the-land commune in northern California. A childhood without television gave her a great love of the written word. At seven, she wrote her first book, an illustrated adventure starring her cat Cleo. Sadly, that story is out of print, but her work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Interzone, Fantasy, Black Static, Tor.com, the Proceedings of the 2002 International Oral History Association Congress, and many anthologies, including the Australian Shadows Award-winning Grants Pass, and The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk.

Books include contemporary fantasies The Queen and The Tower and A Sword in The Sun, the first two books in The Nightcraft Quartet; hippie horror novel Eel River; story collection Eastlick and Other Stories; personal essay collection I Was a Trophy Wife; Orcas Intrigue, Orcas Intruder, Orcas Investigation, and Orcas Illusion, the first four books in the cozy mystery series The Chameleon Chronicles, in collaboration with Karen G. Berry under the pen name Laura Gayle; and Our Lady of the Islands, co-written with the late Jay Lake. Our Lady received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2014, and was a finalist for the Endeavour Award. Forthcoming books include Nightcraft books three and four; a sequel to Our Lady; and another Orcas mystery. Edited books include the anthologies Witches, Stitches & Bitches and Black-Eyed Peas on New Year’s Day: An Anthology of Hope, and the essay collection The Usual Path to Publication.

Shannon is a longtime yoga practitioner, has no tattoos (but she did recently get a television), and lives on lovely, remote Orcas Island, Washington, with her husband, author and illustrator Mark Ferrari. Visit her at www.shannonpage.net.