On Themes of Apocalypse, Whaling, and Environmental Collapse

We are thrilled to host two local authors — Craig Bernardini and Ethan Rutherford — on our stage to introduce their newest books while discussing the craft of writing apocalyptic and disaster narratives. Prepare to be thrilled, perhaps shocked, but mostly delighted by the brilliance of these two writers.

In a series of sharp and poignant narratives, New American Fiction Prize-winner Craig Bernardini’s thrilling new collection of stories 12 Oxen Under the Sea delves into questions of spectatorship, alienation, and trauma as “rehearsals for the apocalypse.” “A stylistic marvel. Strange, beautiful, horrifying, unique. A testament to the highest truth: the sentence rules all. There are very few writers capable of pulling off what Bernardini achieves on every page. I will happily return to these stories for years to come.” — GABRIEL BUMP, Author of Everywhere You Don’t Belong

From “one of our great artists of catastrophe” (Laura van den Berg) comes North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther—an allegory of extraction and a tale of adventure and endurance during the waning days of the American whaling industry.

Books will be available for purchase and signing. Please RSVP so we can plan accordingly.

About Craig and His Book

Craig Bernardini's stories and essays have appeared in AGNI, Conjunctions online, The Gettysburg Review, New Ohio Review, and many other lovely journals. His story collection 12 Oxen Under the Sea won the 2023 New American Press Fiction Prize. He teaches English at Hostos Community College, a CUNY school in the Bronx, and lives in Hopewell Junction with his partner, dogs, and chickens (cats RIP).

12 Oxen Under the Sea — In a popular Manhattan restaurant, a child bursts into flame and cannot be extinguished. Pianists serially murder each other as they begin to perform Beethoven’s “Hammerklavier” sonata. A dying father turns into an amphibious creature and tries to drown his son. The stories in Craig Bernardini’s 12 Oxen Under the Sea are rehearsals for the apocalypse: allegories of a drowning, burning world, a world of metamorphoses and unstoppable viral reproduction, a world at once beautiful and hostile, horrific and absurd, familiar and unfamiliar.

12 Oxen Under the Sea will launch on June 1, 2025, and is now available for pre-order at Bookshop.org. Every purchase at Bookshop.org financially supports independent bookstores.

About Ethan and His Book

Ethan Rutherford is the author of two story collections—Farthest South and The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories—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. North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther is his first novel.

North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther — 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 whale, 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.