Hummingbird

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.

Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Ontario, and brought up on the Welsh island of Ynys Mon. He has a PhD in literature from King's College, Cambridge and has taught courses on American literature and creative writing at Cambridge, Leipzig, Bangor and Cardiff. He won the Rhys Davies Short Story Award in 2002 and wrote his first novel, The Tower (2004), while spending seven months in a body cast after breaking his back falling off the walls of a castle. Soon after he published Send My Cold Bones Home (2006) and Revenant (2008), all set on Ynys Mon and highly praised in the UK. His most recent novels Eye Lake (2011) and its follow-up, Hummingbird, are set in the northern Ontario town of Crooked River, based on Atikokan, where Hughes spent his childhood summers. Tristan Hughes is a senior lecturer and an AHRC Fellow in Creative Writing at Cardiff University who splits his time between Cardiff and Atikokan.