Episode 337: The Intersection of Voice and Point of View in Literary Fiction— Interview with Brad Fox

by Gabriela Pereira
published in Podcast

Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Brad Fox.

Brad is a novelist, journalist, translator, and former relief worker currently quarantined in rural Peru. His novel To Remain Nameless was a Paris Review staff pick, an SPD recommended new fiction title, has been a small press bestseller since its release. It was named by Dennis Cooper as a Best Book of 2020.

Brad’s stories, essays, and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, and the Whitney Biennial and some of his upcoming work will be featured in “From the Deep,” a major exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art in 2021.

Brad Fox left the US in the late 1990s and began working as a feature writer and television producer in the former Yugoslavia. Since that time, he has worked in various countries around the globe, doing different forms of humanitarian and arts-related work.

In March earlier this year, he left New York for what was meant to be a twelve-day trip to northeastern Peru, with the goal of studying with a traditional medicine practitioner and completing a book on the bathysphere dives — the first eyewitness account of the deep ocean. That twelve-day trip has extended much longer than those original twelve days, and he’s been doing virtual book launch events from a little table on the edge of the jungle, surrounded by monkeys, hummingbirds and poisonous ants.

In this episode Brad and I discuss:

  • How his partner’s experiences as a doula inspired many of the characters and the structure of his book To Remain Nameless.
  • What voice and POV techniques Brad used to transition between past and present to give his language “energy”.
  • Why “writing for no reason” and experimenting in the moment is a large part of Brad’s writing process.

Plus, their #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Brad Fox is a novelist, journalist, translator, and former relief worker currently quarantined in rural Peru. His novel To Remain Nameless (Rescue Press, 2020) was a Paris Review staff pick, an SPD recommended new fiction title, has been a small press bestseller since its release. It was named by Dennis Cooper as a best book of 2020. His stories, essays, and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, and the Whitney Biennial. Upcoming work will be featured in “From the Deep,” a major exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art in 2021.

Brad left the US in the late 1990s and began working as a feature writer and television producer in the former Yugoslavia. He then began working with refugee populations as a relief contractor, an often brutal education in human nature. In 2004, Brad co-founded Neither/Nor, an illegal space featuring immigrant artists in Berlin. He was working with asylum seekers in Istanbul before he returned to New York in 2011. Since March 2020, Brad has been in northeastern Peru, studying with a traditional medicine practitioner and completing a book on the bathysphere dives — the first eyewitness account of the deep ocean. 

To Remain Nameless

brad fox

Tess keeps vigil at the bedside of her friend Laura through a long night of labor as Laura’s first child arrives. The two have known each other for what seems like forever. Their humanitarian aid work has taken them from the Balkans, to Egypt, to Istanbul amid the ongoing refugee crisis—an era that includes the US’s war in Iraq, the Arab Spring, and many forms of global consequence and aftermath. Brad Fox’s first novel is a luminous inquiry into the incarnations and limits of hope. This writer helps us endure our questions about what forms care may take, what we may offer to anyone, near and far.

You can find out more about Brad on his website and follow him on Instagram and Twitter

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 337

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