About

Esther Rutter studied English at Oxford University’s Magdalen College, where she held an academic scholarship. Between 2009 and 2016, she worked in education and community engagement for literary heritage organisations including The Wordsworth Trust and UNESCO City of Literature in Edinburgh. As an Honorary Writer in Residence (2017 - 2020) and Research Fellow (2021 - 2025) at the University of St Andrews, she examined and explored creative responses to place, identity, culture, and community. She grew up in Suffolk, England, and since 2016 has lived in the East Neuk of Fife, Scotland.

Esther’s first book, This Golden Fleece (Granta, 2019), explores the cultural history of wool and knitting in the British Isles. Her second, All Before Me (Granta, 2024), is a moving and absorbing account of the struggle to know oneself on the journey into adulthood, intertwined with the stories of the Wordsworth siblings at Dove Cottage. Esther’s essays and poems have been published by Granta Magazine, 404 Ink, Simple Things, and The Irish Times. Described by Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian as ‘[a] likable guide with a good eye for a story’, Esther’s non-fiction writing has also been featured in Vogue, Books from Scotland, The Herald, The National, East Anglian Daily Times, and Knitting Magazine, and This Golden Fleece is available to pre-order as an audiobook from 1 December 2025.

Esther combines her creative practice with working with communities through artist commissions and residences. In March 2022 she was the inaugural Knitter in Residence for Penistone Arts Week, where she was commissioned to create knitted pieces for exhibition, deliver events, and design a pattern inspired by the history and culture of the North Pennines. In May 2022 Esther was one of five artists commissioned to produce new work as part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival in response to the 2022 theme ‘Gather’. Her work was informed by her own experience of mental illness and by the textile heritage of Japan and Scotland.

As well as working with arts organisations across the country, Esther is an engaging public speaker, having given talks at Edinburgh International Book Festival, Cambridge Literary Festival, and York Festival of Ideas, and appeared on national radio, including BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, BBC Radio 4 Today, and BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking programmes. From 2025 - 2029, she will be working on a PhD at the University of Leeds, funded by the AHRC through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH), exploring the lives and works of female artists and writers in Yorkshire in the 20th century.