Jennifer Palgrave is the pen name of crime-writing duo Lois Cox and Hilary Lapsley. They will be appearing at Tūranga on Thursday 15 May to share a little about themselves, and a lot about their work in fiction, non-fiction and gender studies. This is a free event but bookings are required.
Their latest book, Where the River Goes, was published in 2024.
Where The River Goes is a well-developed murder mystery with a strong cast of engaging, diverse and suspicious characters. Each diversion in the storyline, like tributaries of the Rangitata River at its centre, leads back to the case in hand - a farming community in South Canterbury so at odds over water that someone has been murdered.
It’s the third book of the Lauren Fraser series, with Lesbian leading ladies: Lauren, an editor for education publications, and her friend Ro Wisbech, a historian. Together, they’re an amateur sleuthing team who end up in the wrong place at the right time, getting caught up in situations that benefit from their research skills and natural empathy.
Wellington-based Lois Cox is a former public servant who married and had children before identifying as Lesbian. Cox co-edited the first anthology of New Zealand contemporary poets, Ten Modern New Zealand Poets (1974). She also wrote a chapter for Outlines: Lesbian & Gay Histories of Aotearoa (2003).
Dr Hilary Lapsley is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Auckland, specialising in psychology and social studies with a gender studies focus. She was awarded the New Zealand Suffrage Medal (1993) for her contribution to Women's rights in New Zealand and the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian non-fiction in 2000, for her book, Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women. She is also the author of The Measurement of Family Violence, a critical review of the literature available on the subject circa 1993.
In 2000, Lois was awarded a New Zealand History Research Trust Fund to develop a project using oral histories of Lesbians who grew up in New Zealand in the 1950's and '60s, collected as part of her research during the 1990s. The product of this body of work is That's What I Am, just released for 2025.
Where the River Goes, published by Town Belt Press, was nominated for a Ngaio Marsh Award this year. Join me to witness this indomitable duo being interviewed and bring along some questions of your own!
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