Rita Bullwinkel is an American author who is known for her 2024 debut novel Headshot, which was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize. [1] She is also the author of the 2018 collection of short stories Belly Up, which was awarded a Whiting Award in 2022. [2] [3]
Bullwinkle is a professor at the University of San Francisco where she teaches creative writing. Her other works have appeared in literary journals including The White Review , BOMB , NOON and Guernica . [4] In 2024, Bullwinkel became the editor of the literary magazine McSweeney's Quarterly after having served an editor at large since 2016. [5]
Bullwinkel's 2024 novel Headshot follows the lives of eight young female boxers as they converge on Reno, Nevada for a two-day boxing tournament in July. The boxing tournament, held at Bob's Boxing Palace (a dilapidated warehouse), hosts the Daughters of America Cup, which consists of single elimination boxing matches between under 18 female boxers. Each chapter of the book is devoted to a boxing match in the tournament, with the chapters describing the matches as well as exploring each athlete's history and background. Other parts of the narrative moves into the future and details the women's future lives. Writing for The New York Times , Dwight Garner stated that the novel's introspective approach to the narrative, focusing on the women's motivations, inner thoughts, past and future lives and ambitions rather than the outcomes of the matches provided for a rapturous experience. Garner stated: "The drama is intense but interior. We are inside a torrid mille-feuille of perception." [6]
Writing for The Observer , John Self stated that the novel "succeeds on its own idiosyncratic terms and leaves the reader's head ringing." Self felt that the character development and exposition were the strongest features of the work, concluding that: "Bullwinkel manages to make each girl spark distinctively on the page." [7] Writing for The Guardian , Benjamin Myers stated that the novel showcased the grittiness and violence of the boxing matches in lyrical detail while also exploring the inner struggles of the women as they navigate society. [8]
In 2025 Headshot was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. [9]
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is best known for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is also the founder of several notable literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.
Helen Garner is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene—it is now widely considered a classic. She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with her novels Monkey Grip and The Spare Room (2008).
Alice McDermott is an American writer and university professor. She is the author of nine novels and a collection of essays. For her 1998 novel Charming Billy she won an American Book Award and the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Orange Prize. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Her most recent novel, Absolution was awarded the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award.
Sheila Heti is a Canadian writer.
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Jewell Parker Rhodes is an American bestselling novelist and educator.
Tash Aw, whose full name is Aw Ta-Shi is a Malaysian writer living in London.
Brad Listi is an American author and podcast host. His first novel, Attention. Deficit. Disorder., was published by Simon & Schuster in February 2006, and became a Los Angeles Times Bestseller. His second book, Board, co-authored with Justin Benton, is an experimental nonfiction literary collage published by TNB Books, the publishing imprint of the online culture magazine and literary collective The Nervous Breakdown, of which Listi is the founding editor. TNB has more than 1,000 contributors and featured authors and a monthly book club, the TNB Book Club. Listi's second novel, 'Be Brief And Tell Them Everything,' was released in 2022 by Ig Publishing.
Christopher Sorrentino is an American novelist and short story writer of Italian and Puerto Rican descent. He is the son of novelist Gilbert Sorrentino and Victoria Ortiz. His first published novel, Sound on Sound (1995), draws upon innovations pioneered in the work of his father, but also contains echoes of many other modernist and postmodernist writers. The book is structured according to the format of a multitrack recording session, with corresponding section titles.
Peter Orner is an American writer. He is the author of two novels, two story collections and a book of essays. Orner holds the Professorship of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College and was formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. He spent 2016 and 2017 on a Fulbright grant in Namibia teaching at the University of Namibia.
Rachel Kushner is an American writer, known for her novels Telex from Cuba (2008), The Flamethrowers (2013), The Mars Room (2018), and Creation Lake (2024).
Sophie Cunningham is an Australian writer and editor based in Melbourne. She is the current Chair of the Board of the Australian Society of Authors, the national peak body representing Australian authors.
Gabriel George Hudson was an American writer. His novel Gork, the Teenage Dragon was released by Knopf on July 11, 2017. Hudson's first book of fiction, Dear Mr. President, has been translated into seven languages, was a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist, and received the Alfred Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Dwight Garner is an American journalist and longtime writer and editor for The New York Times. In 2008, he was named a book critic for the newspaper. He is the author of Garner's Quotations: A Modern Miscellany and Read Me: A Century of Classic American Book Advertisements. In 2023 he published his memoir, The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading.
Helen "Nell" Louise Zink is an American writer living in Germany. After being a long term penpal of Avner Shats, she came to prominence in her fifties with the help of Jonathan Franzen and her novel, Mislaid, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her debut The Wallcreeper was released in the United States by the independent press Dorothy and named one of 100 notable books of 2014 by The New York Times, as was Mislaid. Zink then released Nicotine, Private Novelist and Doxology through Ecco Press. In 2022 she published Avalon, again a New York Times notable book, with Alfred A. Knopf.
Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
Normal People is a 2018 novel by the Irish author Sally Rooney. Normal People is Rooney's second novel, published after Conversations with Friends (2017). It was first published by Faber & Faber on 30 August 2018. The book became a best-seller in the US, selling almost 64,000 copies in hardcover in its first four months of release. A critically acclaimed and Emmy nominated television adaptation of the same name aired from April 2020 on BBC Three and Hulu. A number of publications ranked it one of the best books of the 2010s.
Hernan Diaz is an Argentine-American writer. His 2023 novel, Trust, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His 2017 novel In the Distance was a finalist for the same Pulitzer Prize, as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He also received a Whiting Award.
Kelli Jo Ford is an American novelist and writer. Her novel-in-stories, Crooked Hallelujah, was one of NPR's "Books we love" for 2020" and a New York Times Editors Choice.
The 2024 Booker Prize is a literary award worth £50,000 given for the best English-language novel published between 1 October 2023 and 30 September 2024 in either the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner, Samantha Harvey for her sci-fi novel Orbital, was announced on 12 November 2024 at Old Billingsgate in London.