Tristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Canada, where he lived for two years before moving to Ynys Mon, an island off the coast of north Wales. He was educated at a bilingual school in Porthaethwy, north Wales, and went on to study literature at the universities of York and Edinburgh, and King's College, Cambridge. He has taught courses on American literature and culture in Cambridge, Taiwan and Bangor. The Tower, his first book, was published to critical acclaim in 2003. It is set on Ynys Mon and explores the relationship between people and place. Taking a motley collection of characters - including magic mushroom heads, unscrupulous property developers and Welsh exiles in London - he dramatises the emotional, historical and psychological bonds between them and the landscape that they physically and imaginatively inhabit. The Tower reflects his preoccupation with geography, identity and the changing face of modern Wales. In 2002 he won the Rhys Davies Award and has given readings of his work at the Ottawa International Writers Festival, the Frank O'Conner Festival of the Short Story in Cork and, most recently, at a celebration of Welsh writing in English at The House of Commons. Send My Cold Bones Home is his second novel and has been longlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2007.

Thanks to the HALMA grant you can read a sample translation of Tristan Hughes' writing in Belorussian and Greek.

The HALMA grant for Tristan Hughes is supported by Wales Literature Exchange.