Stephen Alter is an American author, primarily of non-fiction but also of fiction, who was born and raised in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, where he grew up as the son of missionaries. Accordingly, he was a Third Culture Kid

Third culture kid

Third culture kid is a term coined in the early 1950s by American sociologist and anthropologist Ruth Hill Useem "to refer to the children who accompany their parents into another society". Other terms, such as trans-culture kid, are also used by some. More recently, American sociologist David C...

 (TCK), and his writings are generally described as Indo-nostalgic. His childhood was spent primarily in the small British Raj

British Raj

British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

-era hill station

Hill station

A hill station is a town located at a higher elevation than the nearby plain or valley. The term was used mostly in colonial Asia , but also in Africa , for towns founded by European colonial rulers as refuges from the summer heat, up where temperatures are cooler...

 of Landour

Landour

Landour , a small cantonment town contiguous with Mussoorie, is about from the city of Dehradun in the northern state of Uttarakhand in India. The twin towns of Mussoorie and Landour, together, are a well-known British Raj-era hill station in northern India. Mussoorie-Landour was widely known as...

 in the Lower Western Himalaya -- which has, conveniently, provided a catchy title for one of his more successful (autobiographical) titles: "All the Way to Heaven: An American Boyhood in the Himalayas". Attention-grabbing titles would appear to be an Alter hallmark -- "Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage Up the Ganges River" is another of his titles.

He graduated from Woodstock School

Woodstock School

Woodstock School is a Christian, international, co-educational, residential school located in Landour, a small hill station contiguous with the town of Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India....

 (where his father Rev. Bob Alter long served as Principal) in Landour and subsequently from Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University

Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

.

He has taught writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

  and at the American University in Cairo

American University in Cairo

The American University in Cairo is an independent, non-profit, apolitical, secular institution of higher learning located in Cairo, Egypt...

. He is often to be found in Landour, or elsewhere in India, for long stretches, even months at a time. Travelling grants awarded under the Fulbright Program

Fulbright Program

The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright-Hays Program, is a program of competitive, merit-based grants for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers, professionals, scientists and artists, founded by United States Senator J. William Fulbright in 1946. Under the...

 and Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowship

Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 have often provided him with the resources to research his writing projects in India.

Alter, who does not have a mainstream Western audience in the mass-distributed sense, does nonetheless address a distinct niche and enjoys a cult following among fellow former TCKs, former Western expats in India (esp. missionaries) and to a lesser extent Non-Resident Indians. The subject matter of his more recent books may hint at a subtle (or unsubtle) attempt to enlarge his reader base among Indians resident in India, especially as disposable incomes rise rapidly in urban India.

He is married to Ameeta and has a son, Jayant and daughter Shibani.(Stephen Alter is a first cousin of Tom Alter

Tom Alter

Tom Alter is an Indian actor of American origin. As a thespian and television actor, he is best known for his work in Bollywood, but has also worked in the theatre...

, a naturalized Indian actor in Bollywood

Bollywood

Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...

.)

Selected titles

Non-Fiction

• All the Way to Heaven: An American Boyhood in the Himalayas
• Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage Up the Ganges River to the Source of Hindu Culture
• Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant
• Amritsar to Lahore: A Journey Across the India-Pakistan Border
• Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief

Fiction

• Renuka
• Neglected Lives
• Silk and Steel
• The Godchild
• Aripan & Other Stories (2005)