Rita Bullwinkel

Rita Bullwinkel is the author of two books: Headshot (2024) and Belly Up (2018).  Headshot was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Gordon Burn Prize. It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award. In 2025 Bullwinkel was awarded the Addison M. Metcalf Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which biennially honors a young American writer of great promise. She is also a 2022 recipient of a Whiting Award, the Editor of McSweeney’s Quarterly, a Contributing Editor at NOON, the creator of Oral Florist, the former Deputy Editor of The Believer, and the former Assistant Fiction Editor of The Brooklyn Rail. As an Assistant Professor of English at University of San Francisco, and the Picador Guest Professor of American Literature at Leipzig University in Germany, she taught courses on creative writing, zines, and the uses of invented and foreign languages as tools for world building. In addition to editing Mcsweeney’s Quarterly (the house’s magazine of art and literature) she also edits one book-length work a year for Mcsweeney’s Books Division. Books for which she has served as editor have been longlisted for National Book Award and named a best book of the year by The Chicago Review of Books.