Vittala Malekudiya is a journalist and 2017 PARI Fellow. A resident of Kuthluru village in Kudremukh National Park, in Beltangadi taluk of Dakshina Kannada district, he belongs to the Malekudiya community, a forest-dwelling tribe. He has an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication from Mangalore University and currently works in the Bengaluru office of the Kannada daily ‘Prajavani’.