Lucy Steeds wins the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize
The Artist by Lucy Steeds has won the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.
The book is set over one sweltering summer during the 1920s, and focuses on an enigmatic painter, the young British journalist set on penning a piece on him, and the artist’s seemingly unworldly niece. As the young man sets out to write his piece on the great and terrifying painter, tensions between the three come to a dramatic conclusion.
Bea Carvalho, Waterstones head of books, said: “It is a great pleasure to announce that Waterstones booksellers have chosen Lucy Steeds as the winner of the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize for her novel The Artist. 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. It is a stylish, elegant treat of a novel which seamlessly transports the reader to sun-soaked southern France, weaving mystery with romance, while delving into the complex nature of artistry. Lucy Steeds is a writer of rare talent: she is able to conjure vivid brushstrokes, sticky heat, and the smells and tastes of Provence, through words on the page. 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. We can’t wait to see what Lucy Steeds does next.”
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