About Stephen Narain

Stephen Narain is a Ph.D. student in English and Creative Writing at the University of Miami, where he concentrates in Caribbean Studies under the supervision of Patricia Saunders. His debut novel, The Church of Mastery, a coming-of-age story about artistic formation set against the backdrop of West Indian independence and the rise of the Civil Rights movement, will be published by Restless Books in 2027.

Born and raised in Freeport, Bahamas to Guyanese parents, Stephen immigrated to Florida at sixteen. He earned an A.B. in English from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His essay “Superpositional Minds: Multilocal Consciousness, AI, and the Posthuman Turn” was shortlisted for the 2025 Berggruen Institute Essay Competition. His current academic project applies concepts from quantum mechanics to Caribbean literature with a focus on contemplation, walking, humor, and carnival as sites of self-construction.

Stephen’s fiction and essays have appeared in Small Axe, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Moko, and Wasafiri's special issue on the afterlives of indentured labor. He is the recipient of the 2025 Steven G. Kellman Prize for Immigrant Literature, the Bristol Short Story Prize, the Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing, the Small Axe Fiction Prize, and the John Thouron Prize for study at Cambridge University.

Prior to beginning his Ph.D., Stephen spent over a decade teaching writing and literature at the University of Iowa, Valencia College, and The Door: A Center of Alternatives, a youth advocacy center in Lower Manhattan.