Lucy Steeds wins 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for ‘luminous, seductive tale’

North London native, Lucy Steeds, has won the fourth annual Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for her novel The Artist – a sensorial and seductive tale set in 1920s Provence

Lucy Steeds has won the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for her novel The Artist, which has been praised for its “atmospheric, sensory prose”. The North London author began writing the novel – set in 1920s Provence – while living in France.

Described by Waterstones as a “luminous, seductive tale of art, cruelty and love” the story revolves around three key figures: a renowned and reclusive painter, his unworldly niece with an explosive secret and an aspiring British journalist hoping to make a name for himself. But in the heat of the Provençal summer, tensions between the three come to a head.

As the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize winner, Steeds will receive £5,000 and a “promise of ongoing commitment” to her writing career. The Artist was selected from a shortlist of six books which also featured Confessions by Catherine Airey, Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal, Ordinary Saints by Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, Sunstruck by William Rayfet Hunter, and When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén.

The winner was chosen by a panel of booksellers informed by votes and feedback from more than 650 booksellers from Waterstones shops. Bea Carvalho, Head of Books at Waterstones, says: “From a shortlist of six stunning books, The Artist stood out for its atmospheric, sensory prose, and its headily evocative sense of time and place.”

“Lucy Steeds is a writer of staggering, rare talent: she is able to conjure vivid brushstrokes, sticky heat, and the smells and tastes of Provence, through words on the page,” says Carvalho. “This is a gorgeously claustrophobic novel to be fully swept away by: The Artist has something for readers of all tastes and heralds the arrival of an exciting new voice.”

Born in North London, Lucy Steeds studied English Literature for her BA and World Literatures for her MA at the University of Oxford. She attended both the Faber Academy and the London Library Emerging Writers Programme.

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Steeds has previously been nominated for the BPA First Novel Award, the Yeovil Literary Prize, the Page Turner Awards and the Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer Award.

“I started writing [The Artist] while I was in France, but I think it’s really dangerous of a writer to believe you can only create an environment by being there physically. So I had to – even when I wasn’t physically there – encapsulate the essence of what it was,” Steeds shared on The Waterstone Podcast.

She says it was by going through “all the senses” that she was able to write the novel – “smells and tastes and textures were really important for this book”.

Waterstones launched the Debut Fiction Prize in 2022, celebrating the best work of debut fiction written in any form. Previous winners of the prize include Alice Winn and Ferdia Lennon, who won last year for his novel Glorious Exploits, which went on to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize and The Authors’ Club 2025 best first novel award.

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