ADA PALMER is a history professor at the University of Chicago who specializes in Renaissance history and intellectual history. Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance, her first nonfiction book, was released by Harvard University Press in 2014. She's also a composer of folk and Renaissance-inspired a cappella music, which she mostly performs with Sassafrass. The Terra Ignota trilogy, which includes Too Like the Lightning, Seven Surrenders, and The Desire to Fight, is written by Ada.