Novelist and essayist Nigel Cox was born in Pahiatua and grew up in the Wairarapa and Lower Hutt. His early working life was varied: advertising account executive, assembly line worker at Ford, deck hand, coalman, door-to-door turkey salesman, driver. Eventually, in the UK, he found his way into the book world, working for many years as a bookseller and a freelance writer. The author of six novels, Cox was awarded the Buckland Literary Award in 1988 and the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellowship in 1991. Cox was senior writer for the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, before moving to Berlin as Head of Communication and Interpretation at the Jewish Museum. Nigel Cox passed away in 2006 after a long illness.