[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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What I Didn’t Know Before
was how horses simply give birth to other
horses. Not a baby by any means, not
a creature of liminal spaces, but a four-legged
beast hellbent on walking, scrambling after
the mother.
From Ada Limon,”What I Didn’t Know Before”
Love as something we know instinctively, from birth. Love as something fully formed, ready to run. Love as language before words. That makes sense to me in the way that intuition and knowing make sense. That makes sense to me in the way that breath and blood and energy flow. That makes sense to me in the way that we quickly learn not to grab hot objects or eat puzzle pieces or seek comfort from crocodiles.
What if our love muscles are fully formed when we are born? Then, what happens as we grow is that life becomes a lesson in remaining soft as we meet hard, remaining curious as we gain wisdom, remaining wide-eyed as we see it all, remaining generous as we lose what we hold dear, remaining kind as we experience cruelty, remaining courageous when the unknown surrounds us, remaining vulnerable when our defenses are triggered.
I am fifty. What I did not know before was the delicate nature of interdependence. What I did not know before was that smart is funny and funny is smart. What I did not know before was that muscles atrophy and strengthen as life ebbs and flows. What I did not know before was that details matter — traditions and routines, timing and honesty, slack and inspiration, creating and melting down, and starting and stopping.
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.
