Tristan Hughes – författare

On 11 June 323 BC in Babylon, Alexander the Great breathed his last. He left one of the largest empires the world had seen, stretching from Greece to the Punjab.Alexander the Great’s death in Babylon that fateful day in June 323 BC triggered an unprecedented crisis. Within a couple of days, Macedonian blood had stained the walls of the chamber in which he died. Within a couple of weeks, Babylon had witnessed the first siege of the post Alexander age. Within a couple of months, a major revolt had erupted on mainland Greece. Within a couple of years, theatres of conflict had arisen across the length and breadth of what was once Alexander’s empire.From a Spartan adventurer attempting to forge his own empire in North Africa, to a vast horde of veteran Greek mercenaries heading home from ancient Afghanistan. From a merciless, punitive campaign against some of the most infamous brigands of the time to a warrior princess raising an army and pressing ahead with her own power play during this ancient Game of Thrones. What followed Alexander’s death was an imperial implosion. This book attempts to explain why it happened.

"What you could change and alter could never be finished or complete or dead. This is what I had been told back then, and what I had tried very hard to believe in since."Beside a lake in the northern Canadian wilderness, fifteen year old Zachary Tayler lives a lonely and isolated life with his father. His only neighbours are a leech trapper, an eccentric millionaire, and an expert in snow. But then one summer the enigmatic and shape-shifting Eva Spiller arrives in search of the remains of her parents and together they embark on a strange and disconcerting journey of discovery. Nothing at Sitting Down Lake is quite as it seems. The forest hides ruins and mysteries; the past can never be fully understood. And as Zach and Eva make their way through this haunted landscape, they move ever closer towards an acceptance of what in the end is lost and what can truly be found.

In his fourth novel, award-winning author Tristan Hughes returns to the landscape of his youth in this vivid and poetic coming-of-age story about death, life, and the changes they bring. Set against the harsh, unforgiving beauty of the forests of northern Ontario, Hummingbird unravels a moving tale of loss, absence and redemption.

From the remote forests of northern Ontario to a Neolithic burial chamber on the coast of north Wales, from a frozen lake in the Canadian wilderness to a mysterious Welsh heath, Shattercone takes the reader on a strange, compelling and sometimes heart-breaking journey through the blurry junctures that bind together landscapes and lovers. Including buried elephant bones, explorers gone astray, hidden histories, secret islands, loves found and lost, these subtly linked stories explore the curious and delicate threads that weave together places and people.

In a remote Welsh village by the sea, four friends grow up together. Plain but charismatic Del is the ringleader, unstoppable, supremely confident in her ability to get her own way. Neil, shy and stuttering, and Ricky, full of rage and loneliness, are misfits at school until Del takes them under her wing. Steph is the outsider, but she too is mesmerised by Del's devil-may-care approach to life. They hang around together - mucking about in the woods, searching for treasure on the seashore, doing dares, sharing cigarettes. Then, one terrible day, the gang is broken up for good.Meeting ten years later in the now stagnating village, Neil, Ricky and Steph revisit their childhood haunts and re-live the memories that have cast a shadow over each of their lives. Del is, by turns, the beating heart at the centre of all their stories and a gaping absence.Set against the backdrop of the northern Welsh coast, and told through the voices of Neil, Ricky and Steph - the children left behind - Revenant pieces together their memories of childhoods broken by desertion, absence and death, and uncovers the secrets and betrayals of childhood friendships, with thoughtful, shocking brilliance.

Lower Canada, 1804.Arthur Stanton, lacking direction in his life and desperately seeking the approval of his father, wanders the streets of Montreal filled with daydreams of exoticlands and adventures inspired by novels and traveller's tales. On a sudden whim he decides to sign up as a clerk in the fur trade and is sent on a mission to recover a cache of furs obtained from a secret beaver in El Dorado. Accompanied by a down-at-heel band of voyageurs, led by a disgraced and drunken trader, he embarks on a journey by birchbark canoe into the northern wilderness.Paddling from Lachine to Lake Superior, and then across the unresolved border between Canada and the United States, Arthur's travels will take him into a series of baffling new worlds, where he will prove himself to be hapless in trade, hopeless in love, and terrified of the landscapes and peoples that surround him. Stumbling from one mishap into another, he will at last fall into disaster, seemingly betray his friends and companions, and have to begin a quest to set things right.Set amongst the starkly beautiful landscapes of the upper great lakes during an era of blurred and shifting boundaries between nations and cultures, where nothing is certain and misapprehensions can be fatal, Arthur's journey becomes a tragicomic tale of love, loss and redemption.

'Up Here' by Tristan Hughes won the O M Henry award.'Seal Skin' by Tyler Keevil, Winner of the Writers' Trust of Canada Journey Prize.'Flamingos' by Gail Hughes.Art designed and illustrated by Catrin Menai.With an afterword by Tyler Keevil.Tyler Keevil was born in Edmonton, raised in Vancouver, and moved to Mid Wales in his twenties. He began his career by writing stories and novels about the life he knew on the West Coast of Canada. His works include No Good Brother, Fireball and Burrard Inlet. The story in this book, Sealskin, won the Journey Prize, Canada's most prestigious short story honour. He now lives in South Wales with his wife Naomi and their two children. Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan in northern Ontario and grew up between Canada and Ynys Mon, an island off the coast of Wales. After completing his education in the UK he began writing short stories, winning the Rhys Davies award, and since then he has published award-winning novels set both in Wales and Canada. The story in this book, Up Here, won an O. Henry award, an annual prize awarded to the best stories published in north America. He is a reader in creative writing at Cardiff University.Gail Hughes was an adventurer and linguist. She settled in Bangor, north Wales after travels in Europe and the Middle East. She began writing stories about her childhood and adolescence in southern Alberta, Canada in the 60s influenced by Alice Munro and Katherine Mansfield. They were published to critical acclaim as Flamingos, a year before her death in 2001.Catrin Menai is an artist and writer from North Wales. Her practice explores the relationship between landscape and self, layering poetic fragments, correspondences, and archival materials across time, place, and language. Her work has been exhibited at Mostyn and The Turner House, published in the Artes Mundi Journal and Poetry Wales, and translated in collaboration with Literature Across Frontiers. Currently, she is studying a PhD at the Aberystwyth School of Art and the National Botanic Gardens of Wales, focusing on nature restoration past and present. She is the daughter of Gail Hughes.

"Hughes is a very good writer, if 'good writing' has to do with precision, eloquence, beauty, and passionately held belief."—Times Literary SupplementWelcome to Crooked River, population 2,851 and falling.Eli has lived in Crooked River his whole life, ever since he was born in the dead of winter with the cord wrapped around his neck nearly thirty years ago, and he knows better than anyone about that shrinking number. His father, uncle, and grandmother have all died, he didn't know his mother, and his grandfather, Clarence, founder of the town and eccentric builder of hotels and a now-underwater castle, walked to the river one day and never returned. Eli's childhood best friend, George, went missing, too, when they were kids, around the time his dad started going a little bonkers, and George was never seen again.Eli's always been obsessed with Clarence and George's disappearances. Now, while the town half-heartedly celebrates its centennial and the river, long ago diverted to make way for a mine, reclaims its original path, Eye Lake is vanishing day by day. As new tensions in town rise and the lake's water level drops, Clarence's castle—and his many secrets—begin to surface.But when another young boy goes missing, Eli's past and present collide.Tristan Hughes is the author of three previous books: The Tower, Send My Cold Bones Home, and Revenant. He was the winner of the 2002 Rhys Davies Short Story Award. He lives in Wales.