Spit and Spaghetti #8

[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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Pitches from Wind and Wall

Forbes

Please accept my application for the Staff Writer, Education position.

I write about education for a broad array of audiences. I communicate information with understanding, depth, and clarity. Having been a classroom teacher, applied researcher, and policy analyst, I ground my work with respect for all settings, levels, and roles in a system on which our collective future depends. I view trends in terms of fact, context, and research. Having conducted interviews and focus groups, collected analytics and disseminated findings, and told stories and shared science, I arrive at this challenge full-throated and ready to work. The audience frames my willingness to grow, adapt, and change.

Read entire letter here.

The New Republic

Convict Leasing Today: On History Repeating Itself

I taught a writing class in a federal prison in South Florida for two years from 2018 to 2020. That class gave me a front row seat to our common humanity, a fact which is commonly ignored or conveniently forgotten when talking about incarcerated people. I currently live across the street from a historically designated renovated brick factory in Atlanta. The original owner of the brick factory, B. Mifflin Hood, was a leader in the fight against the practice of convict leasing in Georgia in the early 1900’s.

Building on Douglas Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize winning work, Slavery by Another Name, in which he which describes the historical precedent of using incarcerated people as a labor force “where people were worked to death and buried in unmarked graves”— even after slavery “ended”— I will explore the relationship between the convict free labor movement of the 1900’s (the State of Georgia outlawed the convict lease system in 1908) and the current United States Federal budget highlighting the explosion of funding for prison privatization, which includes earmarks for prison labor.

Read entire pitch here.

Travel + Leisure

Pulling Words and Leading Out: Thoughts from the Museum of Literature Ireland

One word pulled her toward the next, leading her out of herself — Lia Mills

I left myself as I walked through the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in Dublin. One word pulled me to the next. Around each corner through books and portraits, text and images, present time and history, sunlight and gardens, poems and coffee. I fell out of myself and in love with words again, again, and again. My trip to the MoLI set my writing soul on fire. This story will connect travel with our soul’s work, explore what it means to lose ourselves in culture and language, and ask the question, “In what ways does culture and language matter?” At this time when life moves fast, Travel + Leisure readers will be asked to slow down and consider the beauty and meaning of our stories, what we win when we lose ourselves, and the value of culture and language.

Read the entire pitch here.

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