[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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Blossoms
There are days we live
From “Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
I have a secret path in the park where I walk. On the way to the secret path (which is secret because I convinced myself it is hidden, not because no one knows about it), there is a small orchard in Piedmont Park.
There is a rhythm to an orchard. I don’t know what happens in the fall in the orchard. (I am too busy looking at the leave’s color.) In the winter, the trees rest and I have straight view of the Atlanta skyline. In the spring, the trees blossom, and the peaches begin to form. In the summer, the orchard’s sweetness sings. The blossoms burst, and the peaches taste of juice and joy. The ebb and flow, the falling apart and coming back together, the everyday chaos that can easily hijack everyday life doesn’t matter as much. I will stop and taste the sweetness of life in general. I will jump from joy to joy, wing to wing, blossom to blossom.
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.
