Pauline Holdstock was awarded the 2016 Victoria Butler Book Prize last evening for her novel The Hunter and the Wild Girl. Set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century France, Holdstock’s haunting tale of loss and redemption explores the delicate coexistence between a recluse and a feral child on an abandoned estate. The book was published to wide critical acclaim in 2015.

The finalists for the 2016 Victoria Butler Book Prize were announced yesterday in Victoria. Celebrating thirteen years of literary excellence, the award is bestowed annually to authors of fiction, non-fiction, or poetry from the Greater Victoria area.

Coins fell on his face. Dreaming of Tom’s kisses, he twitched. Let me sleep.

Kit lay on his back, on a straw tick and wooden pallet, upturned palms framing his head. Coarse brown hair, threaded with grey like his beard, straggled past his shoulders from beneath a snug woollen cap, and the blue circles under his eyes reached his cheekbones. He wore clothes for winter, the fabric fraying and holed: decrepit hose and slop breeches, and, beneath a leather jerkin, three layered shirts...