[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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The Vault
There is so little/ to hold, I said// as I held it. Each/ bloom/ of strength/ that entered/ my hands.
Andres Cerpa
This poem is written, according to the poet, to remind us to love the world more. Like a vault must be unlocked for its riches to be found, so too must we unlock our whole selves — the parts of ourselves that know safety and happiness and peace and the parts that know fear and isolation and anger — for us to love the world. Sometimes something to hold is what it takes to unlock the safe. The vault of our heart, hardened by time, can be unlocked by with the tiny keys of vulnerability and compassion and breath.
It takes true strength to love like that. It takes tempering of steel. It takes telling the truth. It takes letting go. It takes healing wounds. It takes unlearning chaos. It takes radical acceptance. Once open, the riches of our hearts are ours.
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.
