Ethan Rutherford’s NBA Shortlist Came as a Surprise To Most. At Trinity, It Just Makes Sense.

Savannah Brooks ’26

Editor-in-Chief

Associate Professor of English Ethan Rutherford’s “North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship ‘Esther’” is not your usual candidate for a National Book Award or, indeed, even its longlist. Rutherford’s debut novel, which is filled with microchapters (generally 1-3 pages long) depicting the brutality of the 19th-century whaling industry through vignettes of the men, boys and one folkloric creature aboard the “Esther,” was named as a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction on Oct. 7. “North Sun” joins four other novels in receiving this honor, but it stands out for its strange contents as well as its status as a debut novel (although Rutherford has also authored two collections of short stories) published by a small press. In fact, Rutherford is the only author in the fiction category this year who has not previously received any accolades from the NBA.

For Rutherford, who is currently living in Barcelona with his family for the academic year, “It’s like waking up in someone else’s dream,” as he told the Tripod in an interview. While he will be in New York for the NBA festivities during the week of the ceremony, he has experienced much of the celebration of his work from abroad. 

In conversation with the Tripod, Rutherford remarked on the fact that, as much as he speaks about his book with others, “nobody talks about how strange it is.” “North Sun” is, indeed, strange; one of its most memorable characters (although there are many, with remarkably eccentric names like Arnold Lovejoy and Edmund Thule), Old Sorrel, has a man’s body with the face of a bird. The novel is horrific, whimsical and folkloric — Old Sorrel, in fact, originated from Rutherford’s encounter with the fictional klabautermann, a water spirit found in old North Sea sailors’ folklore. To those who know Rutherford, though, and love the book, the strangeness is part of its allure.

“It’s a strange book — I really appreciated the short excerpts,” Professor of English Ciaran Berry told the Tripod. “It’s almost like each excerpt is a little poem, and it’s a book that really draws you into its world in this weird, strange way, as the the characters get drawn into that world where they’re out in the middle of the ocean and things that are happening are becoming less real all the time. That was the thing I think that struck me the most, was just how much it pulls you into its strangeness. I think it does this impeccable job of making strangeness believable.”

  Berry, who has known Rutherford since he was hired at Trinity in 2014, admitted that he “would imagine this is not a book that anybody would have been placing a bet on to get to the finalists of the National Book Award. It’s a smaller press, the format of the book doesn’t immediately speak to blockbuster. It’s great for the possibilities of what can be successful, because I think, in the publishing world, those are always increasingly dictated by this kind of commercial sense of what’s going to sell. But, to see a book that’s very sort of experimental in its own way and isn’t really speaking to in any direct way to our contemporary moment is great and inspiring to anybody who works in the margin.”

Despite the natural surprise to a book like Rutherford’s — which deals with themes such as child sexual abuse and the cruelty of industry, but does not read as a response to any particular national moment — accomplishing such a feat, Berry, along with Rutherford’s former students, understands completely why he was the author to make waves. Moira Weinstein ’25, an English major who wrote a creative writing thesis under Rutherford’s guidance in the thesis colloquium, told the Tripod, “The way that he wrote ‘North Sun’ was so well done in dealing with trauma in a way that doesn’t directly say it. That analogy between nature and personal trauma is just so complex and genuine — I keep thinking back to those two boys and the bird. You keep wanting to turn the page.”

Kabelo Motsoeneng ’20, who worked closely with Rutherford on the completion of his own debut novel as a senior at Trinity, also spoke to the lingering impacts of “North Sun.” “I read some of the reviews and a lot of people are attentive to the sense of the whale industry and what it was doing, but you could remove the whale industry and put in anything and the book would still speak to the destruction of the world. I think that’s the brilliance of it,” he told the Tripod. 

Berry, Weinstein and Motsoeneng all separately spoke to Rutherford’s commitment to not only his own writing, but also to his students. “He’s very insightful as a reader of other people’s work,” Berry said. “He can see the larger thing that you’re trying to get to. He’s incredibly generous and incredibly hardworking, often, I think, at the expense of his own writing, which is why I think we all feel so great about the recognition. He’s been so devoted as a teacher that it’s really nice to see him getting his credit and recognition in the wider world. We’re all thrilled for him.”  

While speaking about Rutherford as an educator, Motsoeneng recalled one of the most impactful interactions he had with Rutherford as a student. “He did this one brilliant thing in my junior year where he wrote a letter to every single student about their work and then gave them a book or a story that related to some of the things that they cared about. That letter changed my life in some way. It was so affirming. It made me feel understood — I thought, ‘Oh, I have taste, and some other people realize my taste and this is how I can contribute to tradition.’”

Rutherford has certainly made an impact on his students — four years removed from graduation, Motsoeneng is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan and holds an MFA, also from Michigan, in fictional creative writing. Weinstein, a more recent graduate, told the Tripod that, along with several other alumni who were students under Rutherford, she traveled to New York to attend the events celebrating him and “North Sun.” 

“He’s an amazing mentor and has made such an impact,” Weinstein told the Tripod. “The people that he mentored and spoke to and advised — we are all so proud of him. We’re all very excited that he is being recognized for the amazing writer and person that he is.”

The National Book Awards ceremony will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 19 at 8 p.m. and can be livestreamed for free online. Visit the NBA’s website for more information and to register.