Stephen Alter is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction and non-fiction. He is the recipient of the first Radisson Mountain Echoes Nature Prize in 2025. Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth, a work of non-fiction, received the 2020 Banff Mountain Book Award in the Mountain Environment and Natural History category. His memoir, Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime, won the Kekoo Naoroji Book Award for Himalayan Literature. In the Jungles of the Night, a novel about Jim Corbett, was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. His latest work includes The Cobra’s Gaze: Exploring India’s Wild Heritage, Death in Shambles: A Hill Station Mystery, and Birdwatching: A Novel, which won the 2023 Greenlitfest Book of the Year. Alter has taught at the American University in Cairo, Egypt, where he was director of the writing program for seven years. Following this, he was writer-in-residence at MIT for ten years. Among the honours he has received are fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the East-West Center in Hawaii, and the Banff Centre for Mountain Culture.