[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
Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake
back
Today
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breezethat it made you want to throw
from Billy Collins’ “Today“
open all the windows in the house
Think about a perfect spring day. Think about the warm breeze. Think about being outside. Think about throwing open the windows.
Throw-open-the-window days are gifts.
Here’s what I know for sure about throw-open-the-window days. We can decide to have them. They can happen at any time. They multiply themselves. When we look for them, our throw-open-the-window days muscles strengthen. Surprises and miracles. Lightening bolts and calls to action. Opportunities and choices. Awe and wonder. We begin again and again and again.
Throw-open-the-window days have a music all their own. We know what they sound like. We know how to dance to them. We know how to sing along. They smell like sweetness. They taste like joy. they are unique and precious. They locate us in particular times and spaces.
Perhaps that is the beauty of spring? We are reminded to throw open the windows of doubt and fear and anxiety and simply live. We are invited to live into it all.
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.
