Rita Bullwinkel is an American writer known for her 2024 debut novel Headshot, longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. She also wrote the short story collection Belly Up (2018), which won a Whiting Award in 2022.
Bullwinkel was raised in the United States and studied literature at university. She later became a professor of creative writing at the University of San Francisco. Her short fiction has appeared in literary journals such as The White Review, BOMB, NOON and Guernica. In 2024, she became the editor of McSweeney’s Quarterly, having served as an editor at large since 2016.
Her novel, Headshot (2024), follows eight teenage female boxers competing in the Daughters of America Cup in Reno, Nevada. The matches occur in Bob’s Boxing Palace, a rundown warehouse hosting a two-day tournament. Each chapter focuses on a different fight, revealing the athletes' pasts, ambitions, and futures. The novel does not centre on who wins or loses but on the inner lives of the competitors.
Writing for The New York Times, Dwight Garner described the book’s approach: “The drama is intense but interior. We are inside a torrid mille-feuille of perception.” The Observer’s John Self praised Bullwinkel’s character work: “Bullwinkel manages to make each girl spark distinctively on the page.” Reviewing for The Guardian, Benjamin Myers noted the novel’s blend of lyrical prose and vivid descriptions of the sport’s physicality.
Bullwinkel has spoken about the personal experiences that shaped Headshot. “I obsessively competed in every sport I could find,” she said. As a teenager, she travelled to tournaments similar to the one in the novel. She hopes the book speaks to boxers and “anyone who has ever been gripped by an obsessive drive to accomplish something, and to be seen at a time when they felt otherwise invisible.”
Bullwinkel’s influences include To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, a book she returns to often. She has cited The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories as an early inspiration. The book that changed how she sees the novel is Renee Gladman’s Ravicka series, which explores world-building through architecture and language.
In 2025, Headshot was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Bullwinkel is also the creator of Oral Florist and a contributing editor at NOON. As a Picador Guest Professor of Literature, she has taught creative writing, zines, and world-building at Leipzig University.
Photo credit: Jenna Garrett
