Available for pre-order at bookshop.org
To be Released on June 10, 2025 by Apprentice House Press
PRAISE FOR Breakfast Wine
“Vivid in her details, unblinking in her honesty, Alex Poppe has rendered a complex, interwoven personal narrative that is urgent and moving at every turn. Its images precise, its language fierce yet lyrical, its heart on its sleeve, Breakfast Wine sets its stakes on a whole range of human experience. In a line that we want —that we need—to be true, Poppe insists, ‘In the bubble of breath and body we form, there is exhilaration and release.’ If that is so, then Breakfast Wine plunges toward the marrow of that very way of being.”
—Richard Deming, author of This Exquisite Loneliness
“In a time when America’s role in the world seems as nebulous as ever, Breakfast Wine confronts that issue with blazing consideration and rare grace. Due to her work as an English-language instructor and humanitarian-aid volunteer in Kurdistan and beyond, Alex Poppe put herself out in the world in ways so few Americans are ever willing to. Yet it’s her voice, literary and direct and yearning, that’ll linger with you long after you finish her story.”
— Matt Gallagher, author of Daybreak
“Breakfast Wine is an extraordinarily immersive memoir from a writer with a first-class mind. I was struck again and again by Alex Poppe’s insights and her experiences related to the complexities of living abroad as a single woman, in particular, the gender-based hypocrisies and sexual predation (and its apologists) she encountered. This is also a book about finding one’s way in the world as an artist and an intellectual. Breakfast Wine is a terrific book deserving of a huge readership.”
—Christine Sneed, author of Please Be Advised
“Alex Poppe’s Breakfast Wine follows a series of accolades and prize-winning books. This one should win her a prize for bravery. Breakfast Wine is an engaging, intimate, eye-opening portrait of not only the dangers of traveling abroad but more so of a singularly lively and courageous young woman who refuses to surrender her desire to experience and know the world despite its frequent ugliness and evil.”
—Randall Silvis, author of Two Days Gone
“Breakfast Wine is immersive, honest, and completely absorbing. Expertly composed, its stories cover an astonishing range from displacement to home, from heart-wrenching tragedies to unexpected levities. At every step of this gripping journey, Poppe considers complex lives and places with empathic attention to detail, emotion, and meaning. This is an extraordinary work that will reverberate long after reading.”
—Charlie Hailey, author of Campsite: Architectures of Duration and Place
“A remarkable braiding of the geopolitical and intimately personal, Alex Poppe’s memoir, Breakfast Wine, plumbs the depths of yearning. Adventure, knowledge, purpose, understanding, agency, belonging—these are just a few of the things Poppe yearns toward as she travels the world and (un)settles in Iraq as a teacher during the complicated tumult of the past couple of decades. Told in innovative structures and exquisite language, Breakfast Wine is a page turner; it is an eye opener.”
— Patricia Ann McNair, author of The Temple of Air
“In immediate break-speed prose, Breakfast Wine immerses us in a fugue-like world of confusion and contradictions. Through her vivid and unflinching narrative, Poppe captures the resilience of the human spirit and the search for identity amidst chaos. Breakfast Wine is a testament to the power of courage, reflection, and the unyielding quest for meaning in an unpredictable world, revealing what it means to be fully alive and engaged in our choices and the world around us.”
—Judith Turner Yamamoto, author of Loving the Dead and Gone
“In Breakfast Wine, Alex Poppe takes readers on a decade-long odyssey, teaching students in war-torn Iraq. Through her eyes, we experience the trials and triumphs of a female Westerner striving to assimilate into a society that is often unwelcoming. Whether fleeting from earthquakes or grappling with personal tragedy, Poppe’s journey of self-discovery is a feast for the senses. This captivating memoir is both heartbreaking and heartwarming—an intoxicating read that invites you to drink in every moment.”
—Randy Richardson, author of Havana Hangover
“With self-effacing humor and unflinching candor, Alex Poppe weaves a tangled and tortuous web of remembrances from her decade spent teaching in northern Iraq. Breakfast Wine deftly interweaves journalistic arm’s length reporting on cultural differences and political events with deeply emotional first-person perspectives on the impacts those differences and events had on her and others. The effect is both heartening and heartbreaking as her taut tales whip you from one life-altering moment to the next. Reliving this decade with Poppe will have you questioning whether you have ever really lived at all.”
–David R. Roth, author of The Femme Fatale Hypothesis
“While teaching Kurdish teens and young adults in northern Iraq, Alex Poppe’s passion for writing helped her address a tough and harsh reality. In fast-paced, lively, and often blunt language, Poppe shines a light on people whose lives are forever altered by wars they never chose. Readers will find, in Breakfast Wine, an unusual contribution to antiwar literature and a lively call to uphold human rights.”
— Kathy Kelly, Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee
“Breakfast Wine is a journey by an open-eyed traveler who peels away layers of the complex worlds she enters. The book interweaves perceptive insights with personal reflections; propelled by love and “warrior anger,” as she aptly terms it. Adventurous, curious, vulnerable, Poppe opens a window on Iraqi Kurdistan in this up-close and personal account of the challenges of navigating other cultures as a single white female. She draws precise and incisive portraits of wild characters and ordinary Iraqis, we relish her ferocious energy, her clarity, and her commitment to living intensely as she “tries on” different selves.
This heartful account is told with insight and acuity, spiced with vivid, inventive language, and is by turns laugh-out-loud hilarious and deeply tender. We know her from the first sentence, but we learn more and more about her fascinating journey. The book reflects Poppe’s thirst for honesty, social justice, and living an authentic life while staying true to her nomad nature.
Breakfast Wine is a wild ride through Kurdish Iraq, by turns tragic, adventurous, hilarious and tender, written by a true explorer.”
—Ellen Kaplan, editor and co-contributor of Theatre Responds to Social Trauma: Chasing the Demons
“Breakfast Wine is a fascinating and moving account of an American woman living in northern Iraq during a deeply formative time in her life. The writing is beautiful, devastating, tender and often funny. Through Poppe’s eyes there is little judgement, only observation of humanity in a violent society, where people struggle deeply but are resilient, full of the capacity for joy, wonder, and forgiveness.”
—Lisa Cupolo, author of Have Mercy on Us
“This beautifully written memoir, told in vignettes of the author’s experience in northern Iraq, is filled with poignant and raw moments that depict the stark reality of the life the author left behind. The reader is taken along with Poppe as she provides humanitarian aid to refugees in a nearby village and when she leads a discussion of The Handmaiden’s Tale with her students (including one woman wearing a hijab). The author went to Iraq because something was missing in her own life. I’m sure the many lives she touched while there are grateful that she did.”
—Michelle Paris, author Eat Dessert First