About the Author
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James D'Agostino is the author of Nude With Anything (New Issues Press), The Goldfinch Caution Tapes, winner of the 2022 Anthony Hecht Prize (Waywiser Press), and three chapbooks which won prizes from Diagram/New Michigan, CutBank Books, and Wells College Press. His poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Forklift Ohio, Conduit, Mississippi Review, Bear Review, TriQuarterly, Laurel Review, Flyway, december, and elsewhere. He teaches at Truman State University, lives in Missouri and Iowa City, IA, with his partner, the poet and book artist Karen Carcia.
STEEL TOE BOOKS 2025 BOOK AWARD ANNOUNCEMENT
Steel Toe Books is excited to announce our Steel Toe Books Poetry Award Winner and our Steel Toe Books Prose Award Winner for 2025. The titles will receive publication in Fall 2026. Congratulations to our shortlist and longlist authors, and thank you to all of the authors that submitted to the prize. The 2026 Steel Toe Books Poetry and Prose (fiction and nonfiction) Awards for full-length books opens January 1, 2026 Please congratulate our winners!
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POETRY WINNER
James D'Agostino with:
Build Your Castle Out of Sugar Cubes All Your Enemies Have Tongues
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About Build Your Castle...
Adair County on a Dare
"I don’t know where the sky
scored all this baby aspirin
but I bet somewhere right
now fever spikes in an angel. ..."
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​POETRY SHORTLIST
POETRY LONGLIST
Safira Leathe
Dan Murphy
Theadora Siranian
Mike Bagwell
Erin Kae
D Kealii MacKenzie
Benjamin McCook
Claudia Rojas
Michael Levan
Rodrigo Toscano
Jordan Wyberneit
PROSE WINNER
Nagueyalti Warren with Water: A Novel
​About Water
Water is a novel about the power in humans to overcome horrendous circumstances and still thrive. However, this spirit of survival rarely succeeds without family, love, and friendship. In this Bildungsroman Nena Rosa Summers is fortunate to find all three. Her grandmother Elvira, her lover Rodney Sheffield, and her special friend and spiritual guide Lula Mae Taylor provide a safety net that she needs in order to wade through the deep water of her past and come to terms with her own psyche.
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PROSE SHORTLIST
John Picard
Piper Huguley
Erin Lynn Cook
yu ouyang
PROSE LONGLIST
Cathy Mellett
Blair Lee
Pamela Balluck
Kevin Lavey
Marcel Price
Nan Cuba
Leslie Johnson
Hugh Sheehy
Theo Yurevitch
Catherine Shukle
Dicko King
America Hart
FROM THE PRESS
The press thanks everyone who submitted to the contest and notes that the work submitted to contest was very strong across the board. Blessings!
About the Author
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Nagueyalti Warren, PhD., Professor of Pedagogy emerita in African American Studies at Emory University, is a poet, Cave Canem graduate fellow, and author of five poetry collections, among them Margaret which won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, and Braided Memory, winner of the Violet Reed Hass poetry prize. She is also author of Grandfather of Black Studies: W.E.B. Du Bois, and Alice Walker’s Metaphysics: Literature of Spirit. Warren is editor of Temba Tupu! (Walking Naked) The Africana Woman’s Poetic Self Portrait and Critical Insights: Alice Walker. Her short stories have appeared aaduna Magazine, Midnight and Indigo. Water is her debut novel.
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