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<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“North Sun” by Ethan Rutherford<\/p>\n
Talia Cutler \u201927<\/p>\n
Managing Editor<\/p>\n
The National Book Awards unveiled their longlist for Young People\u2019s Literature on Sept. 12. The list included Trinity\u2019s own Associate Professor of English Ethan Rutherford, for his book \u201cNorth Sun: Or, The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n The National Book Awards longlist has five categories,<\/a> each selecting 10 titles before being narrowed down to the shortlist of five finalists and ultimately a single winner.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNorth Sun\u201d \u201cis historical, a brutal adventure of sorts,\u201d Rutherford told the Tripod in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s the story of a whaling voyage at the end of the 19th century. But it\u2019s also a bit of a fever-dream, with the hallucinatory making itself quite at home in the ship\u2019s hull of realism.\u201d<\/p>\n Rutherford found out about his work\u2019s recognition unconventionally. \u201cI was reading on the couch,\u201d he said, \u201cand my friend texted me \u2018Congratulations\u2019 without any context. I thought: \u2018for what, being friends?\u2019 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\u2019t quite settled in. But it is a great feeling.\u201d The novel received favorable reviews from the Harvard Review<\/a> and Publishers Weekly<\/a>, calling it \u201cevocative\u201d and \u201ca harsh and stark ballad of a bygone time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWriting is shot through with so much doubt,\u201d Rutherford said. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Rutherford credits his creative writing thesis class with supporting his creative process. \u201cThis 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\u2019t 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.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from finding momentum through his students at Trinity, Rutherford adopted a perfervid writing schedule. Rutherford explained that, \u201cI 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: \u2018What kind of book are you going to be?\u2019 And then the work became trying to get all those pages as close to the book I had in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked what advice he would lend to students on writing, Rutherford said, \u201cListen to the sound of your sentences. Read the work aloud. Sound produces meaning, too.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNorth Sun\u201d is available for purchase online and to check out in the library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“North Sun” by Ethan Rutherford Talia Cutler \u201927 Managing Editor The National Book Awards unveiled their longlist for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[288,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-52522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-books","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}