In the 1920s he was the Paris correspondent of the New York Herald at which time he interviewed Gertrude Stein in 1924 after she published her long gestated novel The Making of Americans.
In March and April 1914 he held a series of ‘Conferences’ at the Waldorf Hotel in New York on Prosper Mérimée, Guy de Maupassant, and Maurice Maeterlinck.
Typical of Steell's work was his liking for one-act dramas, a good example of which was A Juliet of the People produced at the Madison Square Theatre 1901, and which reviewed in the New York Times, 20 January 1900: "A Juliet of the People, a one-act drama by Willis Steell, setting forth in simple and natural action and with a touch of poetical feeling, the incidents of a tragedy in humble life, much in the manner of the stories of the operas of the latest Italian school, had a trial performance last week at an exhibition matinée of a school of acting.
"Along with Edward E. Rose, he wrote another play - completed August/September 1900 - The Battle of the Strong based on the novel by Gilbert Parker, which was produced by Daniel V. Arthur in Chicago in the autumn of 1900, and transferred to New York in January 1901, with Marie Burroughs in the principal role.
With Clyde Fitch (1865–1909) he dramatized a novel by Alfred Henry Lewis called Wolfville: A Drama of The South West in October 1905 at the Broad Street Theatre in Philadelphia.