Fox, Faulkner

Faulkner Fox is an American author and feminist who teaches creative writing at Duke University. Her first book, Dispatches From a Not-So-Perfect Life, deals with aspects of new motherhood, such as fear and isolation.

Fox was raised in West Point, Virginia, a small mill town. She received her bachelor's degree from Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in 1986. While in college and also after college, Fox held a variety of jobs including peer contraceptive counselor, high school French teacher, and tour guide at New Orleans's The Voodoo Museum. She has also researched housing and treatment for the [Page 425]mentally ill as well as women's alternative spiritual practices, a subject for which she was issued a grant from Radcliff College to pursue. Fox also earned a master's degree in American Studies from Yale University in 1989 and a master of fine arts degree in poetry from Vermont College. After receiving her M.F.A. in 1997, Fox taught poetry workshops at the University of Texas at Austin.

An award-winning poet, Fox won Prairie Schooner's Bernice Slote Award for the best work by an emerging writer in 1998. She's also performed her poetry in Austin and also at Frontera Fest. Her Sex Talking Mama piece was particularly popular, and was performed in the United States and Canada as well as featured on public television in Texas.

Fox became interested in capital punishment after being struck by the growing number of executions in Texas. She joined the anti-death-penalty movement and also began writing about racism and capital punishment. She currently volunteers with NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina.

In 1999, http://www.Salon.com published her article on motherhood, What I Learned From Losing My Mind, which received a tremendous response from readers. The piece detailed Fox's overwhelmed mind-set that caused her to whittle away time making mental lists of what she should be doing, rather than actually doing. It goes on to tell how Fox arranged to take a six-day trip alone to an ashram in Colorado to clear her head and regroup. An ashram is a peaceful, secluded place, often in the mountains, where a group resides in spiritual harmony. Following the retreat, Fox says she was more at peace with herself and her life. The piece was so well received that Salon re-ran it twice. Fox says that the response helped her to realize she wasn't the only woman feeling the way she did—conflicted.

Fox's book, Dispatches From a Not So Perfect Life, is a memoir of motherhood that talks about her own unhappiness, despite having most of the things she'd always dreamed of, including the house, dreamy husband, and sweet child. She talks openly about the pressures she and other American mothers feel, as well as about the scrutiny she felt from everyone around her—from doctors to friends to strangers. It further delves into inequality in the distribution of housework and other domestic situations. Further, Fox shares her realization that the reality of motherhood cannot be like her childhood fantasy. Critics called the book intelligent and refreshing, but several female editors rejected the book before Fox found a publisher, which solidified her resolve to finish and publish the work. Ironically, although the book delves into the divvying up of housework when her children were very young, and specifically about the uneven distribution of work between herself and her husband, Fox's husband shouldered most of the child-rearing and housekeeping duties while she completed Dispatches From a Not So Perfect Life.

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