Dr. Lynn Rose, Deputy Director at CGDS, is interviewing Ms. Alex Poppe, who is with the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, and who is author of several published works of fiction and nonfiction, including two books: Girl, World (2017) and Moxie (2019).
Funded by the EU, CGDS is producing podcasts, in Kurdish, Arabic and English to promote understanding of gender issues in the region. The following is one of the podcasts produced for the project.
Girl, World was named a 35 Over 35 Debut Book Award winner, First Horizon Award finalist, Montaigne Medal finalist, short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and was awarded an Honorable Mention in General Fiction from the Eric Hoffer Awards. Her short fiction has been a finalist for Glimmer Train's Family Matters contest, a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and commended for the Baker Prize, among others. Her non-fiction was named a Best of the Net nominee (2016), a finalist for Hot Metal Bridge's Social Justice Writing contest and has appeared in Bust and Bella Caledonia among others. She is working on her third book of fiction with support from Can Serrat International Art Residency and Duplo-Linea De Costa Artist in Residency programs.
Ms. Alex spoke about gender and writing in general and about how gender has interacted with and shaped her writing process. She also addressed how the female characters in her fiction get heard, despite the fact that women often get ignored and interrupted, their words discredited. Alex’s stories are immediate and often gritty. The description on Amazon.com for her most recent novel is the following:
Jax, a magazine model, has had half her face destroyed in a bomb blast. Drowning in whiskey and self-loathing, she must rebuild her life now that her beauty is gone. Part love letter to New York, part social justice commentary, Moxie is a timely and raw portrayal of the sometimes self-destructive search for identity and redemption.
Jax is both sides of a spectrum: a sort of airy—if not vapid—pretty-girl teenager, as seen in her diary entries, and a very astute, strong spoken—if not foul mouthed—woman. Of course her situation (being a model, surviving a bomb blast in Morocco) is atypical. Ms. Alex discussed the rites of passage that take us from girls to women. She also responded to a comment about the male characters in a story in Girl, World called “Room 308.” She went on to talk about her third book and about her nonfiction work, after which the conversation turned to the value of fiction in terms of social justice.