Tom Cox (writer)

Tom Cox is a Nottinghamshire-born British author who, as of 2021, has published twelve books. Recurring themes in his writing include folklore, rambling, wildlife, psychedelic rock, cat ownership, local history, and golf.[1]

Tom Cox
Tom Cox on a cliff-top in East Devon
Tom Cox on a cliff-top in East Devon
NationalityBritish
GenreNature, Humour, Fiction, Folklore, Music, Golf
Years active1999 - present
Notable awardsShirley Jackson Award 2018

Biography

Cox began publishing a music fanzine as a teenager in the early 1990s, interviewing Ray Manzarek among others on his parents' home telephone. Between 1999 and 2000 he was the chief rock critic for The Guardian and wrote columns and features for other newspapers and magazines, before leaving print journalism in 2015 to write regular pieces about the countryside, folklore and many other subjects for his voluntary subscription website.[2][3] During the 2000s and early 2010s he published a number of books about golfing, including Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, his account of his year as Britain’s most inept golf professional, which was long listed for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year award. Cox has also published several books about his cats, including the Sunday Times bestseller The Good, The Bad & The Furry, and until 2016 ran the Twitter account 'My Sad Cat', which featured pictures of his cat The Bear.

His book 21st Century Yokel, published in October 2017, is described as “a nature book, but not quite like any you will have read before” and was crowdfunded in seven hours by Unbound. The book details Cox's time living in Devon and Norfolk, as well as stories about his grandparents in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.[4][5][6] The Guardian review described it as "a rich, strange, oddly glorious brew" with elements of nature writing and memoir.[7]

Cox's fiction debut Help The Witch, a collection of ghost stories, was also crowdfunded via Unbound[8] and published in August 2018.[9] Cox moved to a remote house near Eyam in Derbyshire to work on the book, and was unable to leave the house by car for several months during the so-called Beast from the East.[10] This experience formed the basis of the title story, as well as Nearly Northern, a chapter in his next non-fiction book Ring the Hill (2019). The latter book is a successor to 21st Century Yokel and similarly features discursive anecdotes about rural life and rambling in Devon and Somerset.

In 2018, Cox's notebook was stolen.[11]

Cox announced he was working on a full-length novel, Villager, in August 2020.[12] The novel was successfully crowdfunded by Unbound and was published in 2022.[13]

Bibliography
  • Nice Jumper (Black Swan 2002)
  • Educating Peter (Black Swan 2003)
  • The Lost Tribes Of Pop (Piatkus 2006)
  • Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia (Yellow Jersey Press 2007)
  • Under The Paw (Simon & Schuster 2008)
  • Talk To The Tail (Simon & Schuster 2011)
  • The Good, The Bad And The Furry (Sphere 2013)
  • Close Encounters of the Furred Kind (Sphere 2015)
  • 21st Century Yokel (Unbound 2017)
  • Help The Witch (Unbound 2018) - Winner of a Shirley Jackson Award
  • Ring The Hill (Unbound 2019)
  • Notebook (Unbound 2021)
  • Villager (Unbound 2022)

References
  1. "Tom Cox - Tom Cox". www.tom-cox.com. Archived from the original on 2015-09-26.
  2. "Tom Cox | the Guardian". TheGuardian.com.
  3. "Home". tom-cox.com.
  4. "Tom Cox book breaks Unbound crowdfunding records | the Bookseller".
  5. "21st Century Yokel - Tom Cox". www.tom-cox.com. Archived from the original on 2017-12-08.
  6. Sethi, Anita (26 November 2017). "21st-Century Yokel by Tom Cox review – entertaining ramble through English folklore". The Observer. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  7. Crown, Sarah (2 December 2017). "21st Century Yokel by Tom Cox review – rich and glorious rural brew". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  8. Cox, Tom (2018). Help the Witch. ISBN 9781783526703.
  9. Colleran, Mia (4 December 2019). "Help the Witch by Tom Cox review – a beguiling short-story debut". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  10. Cox, Tom. "Winter F***erland". Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  11. "Bestselling author Tom Cox has notes for next book stolen". BBC News. 20 August 2018. Retrieved 7 March 2021.
  12. Cox, Tom. "VILLAGER". Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  13. Cox, Tom (28 April 2022). Villager by Tom Cox. ISBN 9781800181342.
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