[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
WANTED: Week Two
Thoughts On a French Rockstar
I imagine she sings about justice, peace, and love.
Slowly walking past a cubist black and white war story she sings inside a red velvet rope. Her hands carry grief. Her ears hear every cry. Her lips tell the story. Her eyes see the way. Her anger crashes through lyrics. Her sadness seeps through song. Her hope is why she sings. Every inch. Every brushstroke. Every breath.
I imagine she sings about justice, peace, and love.
I watch this unfold from a distance from the other side of a large room. Her presence, a divine invitation to step back from the painting and take it all in. Having walked through rooms of pen and ink renderings — of the small scenes that would eventually make the whole — I am invited to a new understanding of art and war. That is how art works.
I imagine she sings about justice, peace, and love.
My heart breaks with each story. Bulls crashing. Horses thrashing. Bombs exploding. Bodies breaking. Limbs flailing. Faces ripping. Tears falling. A community mourning. The certainty of black and white paints terror in stark relief to justice, peace, and love. A cubist sensibility made sense of senselessness. The darkness shakes my 16-year-old self. I am forever changed.
I imagine she sings about justice, peace, and love.
It was the 80’s. I stepped into the middle of a music video being filmed. I visited the Prado Museum in Madrid. I had never been outside the United States. War was a distant concept framed by the safety of big oceans and strength myths. My grandfathers fought in war long before I was born and never talked about it. Military service had never claimed the life of any of my friends. Planes had not yet flown into buildings in my country. Distance and unfamiliarity dehumanize. Community breaks down at the point of separateness.
I imagine she sings about justice, peace, and love.
I don’t speak French, but I know in the parts of me that know things. The pop star sang of justice, peace, and love. My body knows this like my body knows the cost of wars I have never fought. My body knows this like my body knows empathy’s weight. My body knows this like the space between story and connection. My body knows this like the space between individual and community. My body knows this like the space between fear and faith. My body knows this like I know mornings break.
I imagine she sings about justice, peace, and love.
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.
