Erica Hannickel is a nonfiction author and professor of history at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, as well as a master gardener. An orchid enthusiast for more than 20 years, she currently grows about 150 orchids at home on two baker’s carts and in a miniature orchid cabinet. Her most recent book Orchid Muse: A History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022) chronicles little-known stories of orchids involving empresses, artists, enslaved people, and naturalists from around the world. The book was longlisted for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, shortlisted for the 2023 Wisconsin Library Association Nonfiction Award, and won the 2023 Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries Literature Award.