[8] In 2010, she completed a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at Cornell University, where her work was recognized with a Truman Capote Fellowship.

[8] In 2011, she won the Caine Prize with her story "Hitting Budapest",[9] which had been published in the November/December 2010 issue of the Boston Review[10] and became the opening chapter of her 2013 debut novel.

[citation needed] Published in 2022, her second novel Glory – inspired by George Orwell's Animal Farm and about a nation on the cusp of revolution – was written over more than three years, during which Bulawayo "closely followed the grass roots activism demanding change in countries including Sudan, Algeria, Uganda, Eswatini and the United States, where the Black Lives Matter movement surged.

[22] Reviewing the novel for The Guardian, Sarah Ladipo Manyika concluded: "Bulawayo doesn't hold back in speaking truth to power.

Her fearless and innovative chronicling of politically repressive times calls to mind other great storytellers such as Herta Müller, Elif Shafak and Zimbabwean compatriot Yvonne Vera.