Carol Edgarian is cofounder and editor of Narrative. Her bestselling novels include Vera, Three Stages of Amazement, and Rise the Euphrates. A new episode of her popular weekly series, A Word, Please, occurs every Monday on Instagram. Her essays and articles regularly appear in national magazines and anthologies, and she is coeditor (with Tom Jenks) of a collection drawn from great writers’ diaries, The Writer’s Life: Intimate Thoughts on Work, Love, Inspiration, and Fame.

Jennifer Egan, who has been called one of the most gifted writers of her generation, was born in Chicago and raised in San Francisco. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and St. John’s College, Cambridge, she is the author of numerous novels, including The Candy House (Scribner, 2022); A Visit from the Goon Squad, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize; and Manhattan Beach, awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. She has also published a short story collection, Emerald City.

Tom Jenks is a founder and coeditor of Narrative. He is the author of A Poetics of Fiction: Six Chapters on the Art of Imaginative Prose and My Reading: James’s Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.”

A. T. Steel, winner of the 2025 Narrative Prize, was born in New York City and raised in Bronx homeless shelters, Harlem ghettos, and Brooklyn Brownsville projects. He studied journalism and print media at Kingsborough Community College and lives in Queens.

Narrative Salon 2026

At our Fall Salon in New York, we gathered with friends and fellow Narrativos in the historic parlor of the Salmagundi Club. We toasted new friends and old and celebrated Narrative’s community of readers and writers, including the more than 2,500 authors in our free Library and the teachers and students throughout the United States and in more than sixty countries served by Narrative for Schools.

Hosted by author Jane Lancellotti, the Salon brought together Narrative cofounders and editors Carol Edgarian and Tom Jenks, 2025 Narrative Prize A. T. Steel, who read from his winning short story, and author Jennifer Egan. The videos below capture moments from the evening, including A. T. Steel reading an excerpt from his winning short story, “Honeybuns and Cream Soda in the Stairwell,” and Carol Edgarian in conversation with Jennifer Egan.

VIDEOS

Tom Jenks and A. T. Steel (10:19)

Carol Edgarian and Jennifer Egan (43:16)