NORTH SUN is a Finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE— On October 7th, the New York Times announced that Deep Vellum’s North Sun: or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford is a finalist for the National Book Award in Fiction.
The National Book Award, given annually by the National Book Foundation, is among the most prestigious literary prizes in the United States. Winners receive $10,000, a bronze medal, and a statue; Finalists receive $1,000 and a bronze medal.
The five finalists for fiction were selected from a longlist of 10 books, out of 434 submitted titles. The judges for the category this year are Rumaan Alam, the author of Leave the World Behind, a finalist for the National Book Award; Debra Magpie Earling, a recipient of both a Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Attica Locke, a New York Times bestselling author and television writer and producer; Elizabeth McCracken, the author of the National Book Award Finalist The Giant’s House and two National Book Award longlisted books; and Cody Morrison, the adult book buyer for Square Books. Of North Sun, the judges said, “Ethan Rutherford’s seafaring saga, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther, follows a ragtag crew embarking on a rescue mission and whaling journey that urges the cast of characters to scrutinize their own choices.”
North Sun, Ethan Rutherford’s debut novel, was released in March of this year through Deep Vellum’s imprint A Strange Object, edited by Austin-based Jill Meyers. The novel was quickly met with resounding praise, including a starred review from Kirkus Reviews, and was longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Rutherford’s previous works include The Peripatetic Coffin: And Other Stories (Ecco, 2013), Winner of the Minnesota Book Award and Finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and Farthest South & Other Stories (Deep Vellum / A Strange Object, 2021), also edited by Jill Meyers. Ethan Rutherford is the only finalist in the fiction category who has not previously been honored by the National Book Foundation.
North Sun is the first Deep Vellum title to be chosen as a finalist in the English-language Fiction category of The National Book Award. “The one fiction writer new to National Book Award recognition is also the finalist published by the smallest press in the group: Ethan Rutherford, a debut novelist whose book North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther was put out by Deep Vellum,” wrote The New York Times in their announcement this morning. This is a monumental honor for Deep Vellum as we continue to draw attention to excellent writing, authors, and editors. We could not be more proud of our authors and our Texas-based editors who worked on these titles, highlighting our mission in bringing Texas into the larger, global literary conversation.
Ethan Rutherford, along with all the 2025 finalists will read from their work at the National Book Awards Finalist Reading on the evening of Tuesday, November 18 at NYU Skirball, an annual, in-person, ticketed event that is open to the public and livestreamed for readers everywhere. The Finalist Reading will be hosted by Michelle Zauner, bestselling author of Crying in H Mart, and the songwriter, musician, and lead vocalist of Japanese Breakfast. The Finalist Reading is presented in partnership with the National Book Foundation and the NYU Creative Writing Program. Purchase in-person tickets and register for the livestream at NYU Skirball’s website.
Winners of each category will be announced on November 19, 2025, at the 76th National Book Awards Ceremony in New York. The National Book Foundation will livestream the Ceremony for readers everywhere; register to watch on the Foundation’s website at nationalbook.org/awards.
North Sun was published in the U.S. on March 11th, 2025. It is available to order from Deep Vellum, Bookshop.org, or your local independent bookstore.
All at once an adventure story, a harrowing sea voyage, and a shocking tale of environmental exploitation and predation, North Sun is a brilliant debut novel from Ethan Rutherford.
Setting out from New Bedford in 1878, the crew of the Esther is confident the sea will be theirs: in addition to cruising the Pacific for whales, they intend to hunt the teeming northern grounds before the ice closes. But as they sail to their final destination in the Chukchi Sea, where their captain Arnold Lovejoy has an urgent directive of his own to attend to, their encounters with the natural world become more brutal, harrowing, ghostly, and strange.
With one foot firmly planted in the traditional sea-voyage narrative, and another in a blazing mythos of its own, this debut novel looks unsparingly at the cost of environmental exploitation and predation, and in doing so feverishly sings not only of the past, but to the present and future as well.
Ethan Rutherford’s fiction has appeared in BOMB, Tin House, Electric Literature, Ploughshares, One Story, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, and The Best American Short Stories. He is the author of two story collections—Farthest South (Deep Vellum, 2020) and The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories (Ecco, 2013)—and for these works has been named a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the John Leonard Prize and CLMP’s Firecracker Award, received honorable mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and was the winner of a Minnesota Book Award. Born in Seattle, Washington, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and now teaches Creative Writing at Trinity College. He lives in Hartford, Connecticut with his wife and two children.
Established in 1950, the National Book Awards are American literary prizes administered by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization. A pantheon of writers such as William Faulkner, Marianne Moore, Ralph Ellison, John Cheever, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Robert Lowell, Walker Percy, John Updike, Katherine Anne Porter, Norman Mailer, Lillian Hellman, Elizabeth Bishop, Saul Bellow, Toni Morrison, Flannery O’Connor, Adrienne Rich, Thomas Pynchon, Alice Walker, E. Annie Proulx, Jesmyn Ward, and Ta-Nehisi Coates have all won National Book Awards. Although other categories have been recognized in the past, the Awards currently honor the best Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature, published each year.
Deep Vellum is a nonprofit publishing house and literary arts organization with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature. Founded in 2013 in Dallas, TX, Deep Vellum has expanded to encompass six distinct publishing imprints and is now the largest publisher of translated literature in the United States.