SAN FRANCISCO (October 1, 2025)— The editors of Narrative have awarded A. T. Steel the 2025 Narrative Prize, given annually for the best work by an emerging writer published in the previous year in Narrative. Steel earns the prize for Honey Buns and Cream Soda in the Stairwell. The Narrative Prize has been awarded every year since Narrative’s launch in 2003, and Steel is the twenty-seventh recipient of the prestigious award.

In awarding the 2025 Narrative Prize—which includes funds of $5,000—Narrative cofounder and editor Tom Jenks remarked, “With extraordinary sensitivity in prose born in mean streets and reaching up to the stars, A. T. Steel writes about young, queer, and transsexual foundlings struggling for survival and dignity in New York City’s homeless shelters, projects, and gay cruising piers of the early 1990s. Reading his Narrative Prize–winning story when it came in over the transom was like discovering Faulkner or Baldwin for the first time—a resonant artistry of encompassing social consciousness and a humanizing embrace.”

Steel was born in New York City and raised in Bronx homeless shelters, Harlem ghettos, and Brooklyn Brownsville projects. On receiving this award, he said, “No amount of daydreaming could have prepared me for this honor. Being awarded the Narrative Prize for a story as deeply personal as ‘Honey Buns and Cream Soda in the Stairwell’ is overwhelming in the best of ways. Being exalted into the ranks of poets and literary artists whose work I cherish, like Min Jin Lee and Ocean Vuong, is a dream realized. Stories from the trenches—from repressed, marginalized communities on the societal fringe—aren’t often recognized on this level, and I am grateful to be a vessel through which they can be.”

The Narrative Prize, which recognizes writers whose talent and accomplishments place them at the forefront of a new generation of storytellers, has been awarded to twenty-six previous winners, including Madeleine Cravens, Morgan Talty, Tryphena Yeboah, Gbenga Adesina, Paisley Rekdal, Javier Zamora, Ocean Vuong, Kirstin Valdez Quade, Natalie Diaz, Anthony Marra, Maud Newton, Michael Dickman, Saidiya Hartman, and Min Jin Lee. See all the winning works here.

Founded in 2003, Narrative, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, is dedicated to advancing the literary arts in the digital age by supporting the finest writing talent and encouraging readership across generations, in schools, and around the globe. As the premier digital publisher of first-rank fiction, poetry, essays, and art, each year Narrative publishes hundreds of well-known and emerging writers. The Narrative for Schools program supports teachers and students around the world, who are too often hampered by limited resources, by providing free reading, lesson plans, video tutorials, and the annual Narrative High School Writing Contest to inspire the next generation of readers and writers. Narrative for Schools programming reaches 120,000 students and teachers in schools worldwide—in fifty-five countries and throughout the US. Narrative was founded on the conviction that there should be no socioeconomic barriers to accessing great literature. Our ever-expanding modern library of thousands of stories, poems, and essays is free to all.

FOR MORE INFORMATION about Narrative, contact editors Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian.