A.T. Steel

Writer | Artist | Aesthete

Check out all of my stuff:Β Linktr.ee

Culture changes through education, and art has always been one of the great educators. I believe that it has the power to change the character of mankind. Please allow my art to speak for itself.

Work:

β€œHoney Buns and Cream Soda in the Stairwell” in Narrative Magazine (Spring 2025)
β€œWaffles & Ice Cream for Breakfast” in Foglifter Journal (April 2025)
β€œHarlem, Summer 1991” in West Branch (May 2024)

🌞 My story about a trans teenager was published in West Branch magazine! It is an adapted excerpt from an ambitious, POV-swapping literary fiction novel set in hostile Harlem ghettos in the early 90s following a sisterhood of young queer and transsexual foundlings. The cultural significance of this event is not lost on me either. A trans-masc friend impressed upon me the other day: β€œThis is a huge victory for you, but it’s also a huge victory for the trans community … that a story about our people β€” our young people, the most contentious group of us in a country attacking our very existence β€” is so indisputably good that it is in a literary magazine … It will always be a battle to get cis-het people to read about our people, to really care about us, especially when racism meets transphobia. That doesn’t mean it’s not a battle that isn’t worth fighting.” you live and you die, then you live again #usandthem

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Why?

I started this blog in November of 2021, a year after the death of my mother and a month after completing my first manuscript and crawling out of the murky depths of self-deprecating depression. I didn’t know in whose hands all of the musings I’d filled my journals with would end up, but I knew that I didn’t want to speak to myself anymore.

I won’t always be interesting or have something important to contribute, but I’ll contribute anyway, into the void, so that, maybe, someone will find it and feel validated in like-minded company.

Once upon a time, I was. And I had something to say.