Nigel Cox (author)
| Nigel Cox | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 13 January 1951 |
| Died | 28 July 2006 (aged 55) |
| Occupation | Author and museum director |
| Citizenship | New Zealand |
Nigel Cox (13 January 1951 – 28 July 2006) was a New Zealand author and museum director, with five novels published as of early 2006.
Born in 1951 in Pahiatua, Cox grew up in the Wairarapa and Lower Hutt area. He worked in various jobs up until 1977; in the words of his author page on the Victoria University Press website, "His early working life reads like an author trying to find his way: advertising account executive, assembly line worker at Ford, deck hand, coalman, door-to-door turkey salesman, driver." Later, between 1977 and 1993, he worked as a bookseller in Auckland and Wellington.
His first two novels, Waiting for Einstein (1984) and Dirty Work (1987) were both written while he was working in bookstores in Wellington and Auckland. Both these novels have Wellington settings.
For Dirty Work, Cox was awarded the Bucklands Memorial Literary Prize in 1988, as well as the 1991 Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship. From 1993, he took up work as senior writer at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. He published a number of articles during this time, but did not produce any new novels.
As of the publication of Skylark Lounge in 2000, Cox had not published a new novel since Dirty Work, thirteen years previously. The same year, he left New Zealand to become Head of Communication and Interpretation at the Jewish Museum Berlin.
While in Berlin, Cox completed his fourth novel, Tarzan Presley (2004). The book was notable for fusing the life story of Elvis Presley and the fictional character Tarzan into a single original narrative. The book was nominated in the fiction category of the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 2005, where it was judged runner-up, despite being embroiled in copyright controversy in the United States.
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