Headshot

‘I wrote this book l because I wanted to remember how I felt when I was a young woman and obsessively competed in every sport I could find. I would often drive, or have my parents drive me, to tournaments that felt very similar to the tournament in this book. My hope is that boxers, and lovers of boxing, will find authenticity in this book, but that also 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, will find themselves in these pages.’

Read the full interview here.

‘A gripping and gutsy depiction of a young women’s boxing tournament in Nevada. In a compelling series of interconnected snapshots, Bullwinkel weaves a tapestry around several diverse, steely characters, each with their own unique back stories, motivations and perspectives. With great flair and candid detail, the author elevates the gritty physical realities of sport to a profound examination of identity, destiny and family dynamics, and of the transitory yet intense significance of human experience, lending the book a depth far beyond most sports fiction. An unflinching debut.’

Kate Preziosi, Brooklyn Rail

‘Bullwinkel makes surprising and shrewd connections between the world of this one tournament and the other hidden worlds that girls build in plain sight … A fearless and faithful rendering of what it’s like to inhabit the secret world of girls—the disorientation, the violence, the delusions of grandeur, the simultaneous intimacy with and alienation from one another—through the eyes of eight competitors at the very edge of girlhood, playing the last hand-clapping game of their lives.’

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, The Atlantic

‘Bullwinkel has written a novel with eight underdogs, and seven of them must lose. Each of the girls walks into the tournament already wounded by life; the indignities they face aren’t limited to those of the contest. Even the girl whose sisters are former boxers—the closest thing to a Goliath that this competition has—is vulnerable in the outside world; her family lives “in a double-mortgaged house in an undesirable suburb” and, lacking status, is “close to no one.” Perhaps the greatest evidence that these girls are all underdogs is that they are competing for this smallest scrap of glory in the first place.’

Annie Bostrom, Booklist

‘The author writes with intimate knowledge of boxing, of how the girls move and hit each other and how their bodies react to these blows. This is a special little world for girls and by girls—outside of a few family members and a handful of disinterested male coaches, they’re the only people there—that Bullwinkel draws with grit and grace.’

Publishers Weekly

‘For all the toe-to-toe realism and visceral descriptions of the girls’ blood sport, Bullwinkel’s real interest is in their inner lives and the picture that forms when considered as a whole (“you can send your mind up through the hole of the worlds built by the other girl boxers [and] travel through the layers of different imagined futures, and the different ways each girl has of being”). The fragile lives of her weekend warriors are faithfully portrayed in prose that is intelligible but never commonplace, virtuosic yet grounded. Bullwinkel’s knockout performance mops the floor with rank pretenders.’

Dwight Garner, The New York Times

‘It takes focus and discipline and a certain single-mindedness to become a good prize fighter. It takes those same qualities to write a book as fresh and strong and sinuous as Headshot … Make room, American fiction, for a meaningful new voice.’