Women and Children First Virtual Book Launch: JINWAR & OTHER STORIES by Alex Poppe

Alex Poppe's characters celebrate the fragile grandeur of living an independent life in the aftermath of violence. Deeply rooted in place, these stories are about identity, hope, and redemption as fierce and flawed women rebuild their lives in the wake of war. The young women sparking through these pages are surprising, funny, and devastating: the essence of womanhood.

The title piece, "Jinwar," is a funny, yet heartbreaking story of an American woman who survived rape in the military, was denied due process, and found herself working in a food truck shaped like a hot dog during the Kavanaugh hearings.

Her struggle to rebuild her life takes her across the globe to the Middle East, to Jinwar, an all-female village in Rojava, northeastern Syria. Here, survivors of war, patriarchy, and genocide un-make violence and search for ways to heal.

Alex Popppe is the author of Duende, Moxie, and Girl, World—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.

Kate Wisel’s fiction has appeared in publications that include Gulf Coast, Tin House online, The Best Small Fictions 2019, Redivider (as winner of the Beacon Street Prize), and elsewhere. She was a Carol Houck Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and has been awarded scholarships at Writing x Writers, The Wesleyan Writer’s Conference, the Squaw Valley Writer’s Workshop, The Juniper Institute, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago where she teaches at Loyola University and Columbia College Chicago.