Stephen Alter is the author of more than fifteen books of fiction and non-fiction. His honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright award. His memoir, Becoming a Mountain, received the 2015 Kekoo Naoroji Award for Himalayan literature. His fictional account of Jim Corbett’s life In the Jungles of the Night was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, 2017. He was writer-in-residence for ten years at MIT and directed the writing programme at the American University in Cairo. He is founding director of the Mussoorie Writers Mountain Festival.