Nigel Cox

Nigel Cox (born January 13, 1951 in Pahiatua , † July 28, 2006 in Wellington ) was a New Zealand author and museum director .

Early years

Born in Pahiatua in 1951, Nigel Cox grew up in the Wairarapa and Lower Hutt area . He worked in various jobs until 1977, assembly line worker at Ford, sales representative, driver - as is so often the case with a writer who is still looking for his way. Later, between 1977 and 1993, he worked as a bookseller in Auckland and Wellington.

First novels

His first two novels, Waiting for Einstein (1984) and Dirty Work (1987) were both written alongside his work in bookstores in Wellington and Auckland. The stories both take place in Wellington.

For Dirty Work , Nigel won the Bucklands Memorial Literature Prize in 1988 and the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship in 1991 . In 1993 he started working at the Te Papa Museum , New Zealand . During this time he published a number of articles, but no new novels.

2000-2006

With the release of Skylark Lounge in 2000, he ended a 13-year break from writing. In the same year he left New Zealand with his family to build the new Jewish Museum Berlin together with his compatriot Ken Gorbey . His signature in the exhibition is unmistakable.

During his time in Berlin in 2004 he was able to present his fourth novel, Tarzan Presley, to the public. The book was nominated in the fiction category for the Montana New Zealand Book Awards for 2005, where it came second in the jury rating despite the copyright dispute that ran in the US .

In March 2005 the Cox family returned to New Zealand and the Te Papa Museum after five years. His fifth novel Responsibility (2005), set in Berlin , was again runner-up in 2006 at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards .

2006 Dirty Work was reissued at Victoria University Press .

On July 28, 2006, just four days after attending the Montana New Zealand Book Awards , where he finished second in the Fiction category, he succumbed to the cancer he had battled for some time. He was 55 years old and left behind his wife Susanna Andrew and three children Kate, Andrew-Jack and Frank. Nigel was working on the final revision of his sixth book, The Cowboy Dog , which finally appeared in New Zealand in November 2006.

Novels

• Waiting for Einstein (1984)
• Dirty Work (1987)
• Skylark Lounge (2000)
• Tarzan Presley (2004)
• Responsibility (2005)
• The Cowboy Dog (2006)

Web links

• Nigel Cox . Victoria University Press,accessed September 2, 2014. 
• New Zealand Book Council author information page