Deborah Harkeness was born in 1965. She received a B. A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1986, a M. A. from Northwestern University in 1990, and a Ph. D. from the University of California at Davis in 1994. She is a professor of history at the University of Southern California. She is a well-regarded historian of science and medicine, specializing in the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Her first novel, A Discovery of Witches, was published in 2011. She is the author of the All Souls trilogy. In 2006, she began a wine blog entitled, Good Wine Under 0. It provides an online record of her search for the best, most affordable wines.