Mamang Dai is a poet and novelist. A Member of Arunachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (2011-2017), a former journalist and President of the Arunachal Pradesh Union of Working Journalists, she worked with the World Wide Fund for Nature in the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspots programme. Her first book, Arunachal Pradesh: The Hidden Land, featuring the culture and customs of the state’s communities, won the State Verrier Elwin Award (2023). A Padma Shri awardee (2011), she received the Sahitya Akademi Award (2017) for her novel The Black Hill. Her recent publications include The White Shirts of Summer (poetry, 2023) and The Inheritance of Words: Writings from Arunachal Pradesh (2024).