American · 1927–2014
Peter Matthiessen won the National Book Award twice—for "The Snow Leopard" (1978), a nonfiction account of tracking the leopard in the Himalayas, and for "Shadow Country" (2008), a novel about a Florida frontier outlaw. Matthiessen was a co-founder of The Paris Review and a CIA agent in his youth. His work spans nature writing, fiction, and Buddhist practice.