[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!
Melanie Faith
Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.
Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.
The Society of Professional Journalists
In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.
I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.
Maxine Greene
Philosopher and Education Scholar
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Worm
How things lie now will be undone, will reoccur. You, a surface-level archivist/ sensing all there is can be gone through. The body borne/ within its plot.
From “Worm” by Gail McConnell
We are all “surface-level archivists” just trying to use every ounce of everything we have been, are, and will become to live this precious life. There is much beneath the surface to understand and digest. There is much at the surface to experience. There is much in and of the surface to own, celebrate, hold, cherish, shed, and grieve.
In that way, we can learn from worms. They understand ebb and flow and falling apart and coming back together. They pay attention without eyes. They tend the soil without hands. Their bodies move in perfect harmony. They make use of it all.
What does it mean to be a “surface-level archivist”? It means paying attention. It means feeling the ground beneath my feet, but also knowing the ground beneath the ground, beneath the ground, beneath the ground. It means exploration and memory. It means fluidity and courage. It means finding use and beauty in what is. It means birth and death.
About Katie
From Louisville. Live in Atlanta. Curious by nature. Researcher by education. Writer by practice. Grateful heart by desire.
Buy the Book!
The Stage Is On Fire, a memoir about hope and change, reasons for voyaging, and dreams burning down can be purchased on Amazon.
