“North Sun” by Ethan Rutherford
Talia Cutler ’27
Managing Editor
The National Book Awards unveiled their longlist for Young People’s Literature on Sept. 12. The list included Trinity’s own Associate Professor of English Ethan Rutherford, for his book “North Sun: Or, The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther”.
The National Book Awards longlist has five categories, each selecting 10 titles before being narrowed down to the shortlist of five finalists and ultimately a single winner.
“North Sun” “is historical, a brutal adventure of sorts,” Rutherford told the Tripod in an interview. “It’s the story of a whaling voyage at the end of the 19th century. But it’s also a bit of a fever-dream, with the hallucinatory making itself quite at home in the ship’s hull of realism.”
Rutherford found out about his work’s recognition unconventionally. “I was reading on the couch,” he said, “and my friend texted me ‘Congratulations’ without any context. I thought: ‘for what, being friends?’ And then my editor called and told me. There was no warning. I could not have been more surprised or happy, and the news still hasn’t quite settled in. But it is a great feeling.” The novel received favorable reviews from the Harvard Review and Publishers Weekly, calling it “evocative” and “a harsh and stark ballad of a bygone time.”
“Writing is shot through with so much doubt,” Rutherford said. “It really feels impossible so much of the time, even though it is the only thing I really want to do. So I am going to just sit with this happy feeling for as long as I possibly can.”
Rutherford credits his creative writing thesis class with supporting his creative process. “This book really took shape because I began writing it alongside my thesis students. I was asking them to write 1,000 words a day for six weeks and felt like I couldn’t ask them to do that and then just pretend that I had, too. So I wrote with them, and we all swapped notes on our good days and bad days, and with that initial push the book found its own momentum. I feel enormous gratitude to that class.”
Aside from finding momentum through his students at Trinity, Rutherford adopted a perfervid writing schedule. Rutherford explained that, “I woke up early, before the kids and the dogs, and just tried to get as much down on the page as possible. And then I just started asking questions: ‘What kind of book are you going to be?’ And then the work became trying to get all those pages as close to the book I had in my head.”
When asked what advice he would lend to students on writing, Rutherford said, “Listen to the sound of your sentences. Read the work aloud. Sound produces meaning, too.”
“North Sun” is available for purchase online and to check out in the library.