The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #154: Alex Poppe
"I had to learn how to go from situation to story as I was writing because I hadn’t really written in the personal essay form before."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 154th installment, featuring Alex Poppe, author most recently of Breakfast Wine: A Memoir of Chasing an Unconventional Life and Finding a Way Home. - Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Having worked in conflict zones such as Iraq, the West Bank, and Ukraine, Alex Poppe depicts fierce and funny women rebuilding their lives in the wake of violence. She is the award-winning author of four books of literary fiction and Breakfast Wine, a memoir-in essay about her near decade teaching and working in humanitarian aid in northern Iraq.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I am 58 years old, and I took my first writing class in October 2010.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
My latest book is Breakfast Wine: A Memoir of Chasing an Unconventional Life and Finding a Way Home, which was published in June 2025.
What number book is this for you?
This is book number five. Girl, World, Moxie, Jinwar and Other Stories, and Duende are my longform works of literary fiction while Breakfast Wine is my first book length work of nonfiction.
I became a writer slowly and carefully and because I needed to. When I was very young, I wanted to be a writer because I was an avid reader. I was like 8 or 9 years old, and I can remember thinking that I wanted to write books that conveyed the confusion and loneliness I felt growing up to help others who felt that way too.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
Breakfast Wine is mostly a memoir-in-essay with a chapter or two of creative nonfiction. Braiding the intimately personal and the geopolitical, I used what I was experiencing as an outsider, a teacher, and humanitarian aid volunteer to interrogate carceral justice, patriarchy, gender-based hypocrisy and its apologists, motherhood, American exceptionalism in a post-9/11 world, dispossession, and home. Breakfast Wine celebrates the resilience of the human spirit.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
“Dress-obsessed and directionless, 44-year-old Alex Poppe can’t get her life together. Accepting a teaching job in northern Iraq, Poppe chases adventure, purpose, agency, and belonging amidst war-weary students, sexual predators, humanitarian aid interventions, and man-made violence. This yearning, funny, and deeply tender memoir is a wild ride through Iraq as Poppe figures out how to live an authentic life in an unpredictable world.”
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
I became a writer slowly and carefully and because I needed to. When I was very young, I wanted to be a writer because I was an avid reader. I was like 8 or 9 years old, and I can remember thinking that I wanted to write books that conveyed the confusion and loneliness I felt growing up to help others who felt that way too.
I didn’t have the nerve to follow my artistic dreams. I am the daughter of a German World War II refugee. My dad wanted his daughters to be self-reliant, so none of us pursued artistic careers. When I was at university, I wanted to be a journalist, but my dad wanted me to major in business, and I didn’t have the courage to defy him. Later, I chucked my corporate existence and became an actor, but I was always reading books. Working on a short film by Larysa Kondracki, the writer/director of The Whistleblower, ignited my interest to work in humanitarian aid, which eventually led to my teaching and volunteering abroad.
When I returned to New York City in 2010, I needed an artistic outlet, but I wasn’t interested in acing, so I took my first writing class. Back then, struggling through writing exercises and getting in my own way, I couldn’t fathom writing a short story, let alone a book, but I kept at it, and here we are. I need to write to make sense of the world and my place in it.
The genesis of Breakfast Wine was the Atlantic Center for the Arts. As a writer-in-residence, I brought some fiction into my first workshop, which was rightly eviscerated by my colleagues😊. I was telling some story about Iraq at dinner, and the master artist, Randall Silvis, encouraged me to write about Iraq for the next workshop. I started with what is now chapter 8 of Breakfast Wine.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
If my writing partner had a dollar for every time I asked her if the essays “were even interesting,” she would be a very wealthy woman. I had to learn how to go from situation to story as I was writing because I hadn’t really written in the personal essay form before. At first, I struggled with turning the personal into the universal, but as I gained confidence, essaying became fun because I liked the creative problem solving inherent in it.
I didn’t query agents (I don’t have an agent) because Breakfast Wine is topical, and I didn’t want to have to wait for the manuscript to be accepted by an agent and then be sent out on submission before it was published. I queried small presses and had a few offers for publication. I decided to partner with Apprentice House Press because Kevin Atticks, who runs it, is great. He answered all my questions, was always supportive, generous, and polite, and really listened to my concerns.
Breakfast Wine is mostly a memoir-in-essay with a chapter or two of creative nonfiction. Braiding the intimately personal and the geopolitical, I used what I was experiencing as an outsider, a teacher, and humanitarian aid volunteer to interrogate carceral justice, patriarchy, gender-based hypocrisy and its apologists, motherhood, American exceptionalism in a post-9/11 world, dispossession, and home.
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
Upholding the dignity of everyone I wrote about was my guiding light. Part of the reason I wrote the book was to celebrate my students’ resilience. I was and still am awed by their generosity towards me and their capacity for joy and wonder despite having lived through violent conflict. I am amazed that they don’t hate Americans after what some of them experienced during the 2003 invasion or after President Trump’s withdrawal of US troops from northern Syria, leaving the Syrian Kurds who lived there vulnerable to attack by the Turkish Armed Forces and various allied Syrian rebel groups.
I changed names and condensed some characters, but I didn’t run any passages or the book by people who appear in the narrative, including my Western friends and colleagues. Many of the students I focus on had already given me permission to write about them for creative nonfiction, so I felt like I had permission to continue writing about them as long as I was truthful and respectful.
Writing about the character Luke was the most painful because of what happened to him, and I wanted to tell that story with dignity. Parts of his story were in the local and international news, but because of my involvement, I had some details most people did not know.
I was nervous when writing about government advisors or political events, so I made sure to verify the political content I included through open-source materials such as research papers and credible independent news reports that verified what I had experienced.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
A Woman in Berlin and Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures were two books that changed my life. They made me want to move from acting into the world of humanitarian aid and write about it. Journalist Jere Van Dyk was an early mentor. I loved Mikel Jollett’s Hollywood Park. I was also inspired by Looking for Trouble by Virginia Cowles.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
I have three tidbits. The first is from Jere Van Dyk: Live your dreams and then write about it. The second is to embrace adventure over convention. Stories, chance encounters, and embracing risk has guided my life in joyous directions. Finally, when your fear is screaming in your head that your writing sucks, give it something you’ve written and tell it to sit on the bed and read it. You’ll be back for it later.
What do you love about writing?
I love creating people, new worlds, the research writing requires, plumbing yearning, being surprised by how a character reveals themself to me, how the story surprises me. I love getting so lost in what I am writing that it takes me on an emotional journey where I have tears or my heart is racing when I am finished. That doesn’t always happen, but when it does, I have a lot of confidence in what I have created.
What frustrates you about writing?
Writing badly, and that is part of the process. Not knowing what I want to say, which usually means I have not thought enough about my topic. Not knowing why something isn’t working, but feeling wholeheartedly that it isn’t. Creating a piece that feels stale. Those days when you sit for a few hours at the computer and can’t concentrate, produce only a paragraph and end up chucking it.
What about writing surprises you?
I have never plotted a story or a long form piece of writing. I write beat by beat, starting over and rewriting every time I sit down with a work in progress. I let the story unfold itself to me as the characters talk to me, revealing themselves and what happens next. When something I wrote in the first part of a piece organically connects with something towards the end, that connection surprises me because I haven’t planned it. That moment feels like kismet and makes me squeal a little. When I surprise myself like that, I have confidence in what I am creating.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
I write best in the mornings, but my writing practice depends on my employment status. I started writing when I was an educator abroad. When I had early morning teaching assignments, I had to write in the evenings. After being interactive all day, it was easy to sit, be quiet, focus, and write.
When I segued into working for humanitarian aid/peacebuilding/development organizations, I wrote less because so much of my day job was about reading and synthesizing information so I could create content or direct strategy. The last thing I wanted to do was sit at a desk and write. I was DOGEd from my role as the strategic communications advisor for a democracy and governance initiative at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in February, so my life has been chaotic since. I have never been unemployed before and I am the sole breadwinner in my household. For a few months, I didn’t write much at all. But when I am in the middle of a piece, I like to interact with it daily if only to edit it.
Forgiveness for not writing is a part of my writing practice. I need to remind myself that sometimes, not writing is okay because I need to stock up on experience in order to have fuel to write.
I love creating people, new worlds, the research writing requires, plumbing yearning, being surprised by how a character reveals themself to me, how the story surprises me. I love getting so lost in what I am writing that it takes me on an emotional journey where I have tears or my heart is racing when I am finished. That doesn’t always happen, but when it does, I have a lot of confidence in what I have created.
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
I used to be an actor and have recently begun attending a cold reading series for writers and actors in Tulsa. I am toying with the idea of becoming more involved in the acting scene. I plan to turn one of my short stories into a one-woman show. I recently took a two-week storytelling course from The Moth and performed my first story. I plan to do more of that. Walking and lifting weights are important parts of my writing process, especially when I am stuck. Working out usually unknots whatever creative problem I am wrestling.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
This year I have chased nonfiction bylines to support Breakfast Wine. I have one more piece I want to finish and submit before the end of the year. I plan to devote 2026 to fiction. I started a piece in 2024 and will focus on that in 2026.
I love this. Emergency Sex was life-changing for me too!
This is great