Rebecca Priestley is professor of Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. She was science columnist for the NZ Listener for six years and is the author or editor of six previous books, including the critically acclaimed Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica (2019). She is the winner of the Royal Society of New Zealand Science Book Prize (2009) and the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize (2016) and a member of the Melting Ice, Rising Seas team who won the Prime Minister’s Science Prize (2019). In 2018 she was made a Companion of the Royal Society Te Apārangi. She has an undergraduate degree in geology, a PhD in the history of science and an MA in creative writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters.