Sharon Guynup

Sharon's work as a journalist and photographer has taken her to Kaziranga National Park, a last haven for Indian rhinos and an important tiger refuge, into the remote heart of Eastern Siberia to report on grizzly bears, to the Brazilian Pantanal to cover jaguars, and to Turkey's Eastern Anatolian villages to photograph traditional Kurdish life; by boat to the river towns and temples along Myanmar's Irrawaddy River, and cross country through Cuba, with plenty of time in other Caribbean nations and Latin American jungles.

Weaving storytelling with cultural, historical, and scientific information, Sharon crafts features, essays and editorials for national and international publications.

In 2007, she was working on a story about poaching in India's Kaziranga National Park--when she glimpsed her first wild tiger and began writing regularly about big cats. With just 3,200 tigers left in the wild, her concern over the fate of the cats prompted a collaboration with her partner, National Geographic photographer Steve Winter; together, they created Tigers Forever: Saving the World's Most Endangered Big Cat. Panthera, a New York-based big cat conservation organization, receives 10% of the book's proceeds--and 100% of that money goes to fund field programs.

In the final words of Tigers Forever, "Only 3,200 [wild] tigers remain, scattered in small pockets across Asia. That’s a shockingly low number. The time to act is now. Once the last tigers disappear, no longer gliding on velvet paws through the jungle, we cannot bring them back."

She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey with Steve and her son, comedian Nick Ruggia.