Horace Edward "Steve" Carter Jr. (November 7, 1929 – September 15, 2020) was an American playwright, best known for his plays involving Caribbean immigrants living in the United States.

Born Horace Edward Carter Jr. in New York City to Horace Sr., an African-American longshoreman from Richmond, Virginia, and Carmen, who was from Trinidad, he is professionally known as steve carter (spelled in all lowercase letters).

Carter's first interest in the theatre was to be a set designer. As a youngster, he would make models of sets inspired by motion pictures and the occasional play he would see with his mother. Soon he would populate these models with cutout figures. This led to him creating dialog for the figures as he moved them around the set.

In 1948, he graduated from the High School of Music and Art in New York City.

His professional career as a playwright began in 1965 at the American Community Theater with the production of the short play Terraced Apartment. This work would evolve years later into an expanded version entitled Terraces.

On November 13, 1967, One Last Look premiered off-off-Broadway at the Old Reliable Theatre Tavern under the direction of Arthur French. It is a dark comedy set during the funeral of a family patriarch. It features the character of Eustace Baylor that would later be found in Eden, the first of Carter's trilogy of plays featuring Caribbean families in New York City.

In 1968, he joined the staff of the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC), where he would become director of the NEC Playwrights Workshop. One of his best known students was Samm-Art Williams, who once said "that no single individual has influenced my writing to the degree that Steve Carter has."

While Carter was at NEC, several of his plays were produced, including the first two of his Caribbean trilogy.