Stephen Alter

Stephen Alter is the author of twenty books of fiction and non-fiction. He was born in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India and much of his writing focuses on the Himalayan region, where he continues to live and work.

His honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright award. Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth is his latest book of non-fiction. His memoir, Becoming a Mountain: Himalayan Journeys in Search of the Sacred and the Sublime received the Kekoo Naoroji Award for Himalayan Literature in 2015. His most recent work of fiction, In The Jungles of the Night: A Novel About Jim Corbett, was shortlisted for the DSC South Asian Literature Award in 2017.

His latest children’s book, The Cloudfarers, was shortlisted for The Hindu Young World Good Books Award for 2018. He was writer-in-residence at MIT for ten years, before which he directed the writing program at the American University in Cairo. He is founding director of the Mussoorie Mountain Festival.

Almost forty-five years ago, in October 1976, Khushwant Singh, the legendary editor of the Illustrated Weekly of India accepted my first short story, “Fascination.” It was published with illustrations by Mario Miranda. In October 2016, I was delighted to attend the 5th Khushwant Singh Literary Festival in Kasauli.