Peter Matthiessen was born in New York City in 1927 and had already begun his writing career by the time he graduated from Yale University in 1950. The following year, he was a founder of The Paris Review. His works of fiction include Shadow Country, which won the National Book Award, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Watson Trilogy (Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone), and Far Tortuga. Matthiessen's parallel career as a naturalist and explorer has resulted in numerous widely acclaimed books of nonfiction, among them The Tree Where Man Was Born, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and The Snow Leopard, which won it. He died in 2014.