[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 Wide-Awakeness Project
“Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
Mary Oliver
The Wide-Awakeness Project officially began in 2007 with an awkward website and a simple desire to create a home for the questions I had about what it means to be awake in a painful world.
I was diagnosed with Turner syndrome as a teenager, which made my life immediately fragile and urgent. I got a Ph.D. studying wide-awakeness. I built a career conducting program evaluation, publishing articles and blogposts, crafting case studies and curricula, shepherding grants and proposals, and traveling and sharing those adventures — all in search of wide-awakeness.
Wide-Awakeness Does Not Happen In Isolation
I am a voracious reader, life-long writer, curious learner, lover of all things poetic and philosophical, truster in imagination, story, and gratitude, seeker of what we love in common. I believe in connection like I believe in breath, seasons, tides, stars, and scar tissue.
Connection is the heart of wide-awakeness. I used to think wide-awakeness was simply paying attention, consciousness, or even awareness — skills we can practice and develop. The more I study and consider it, we become wide-awake to connect with ourselves, each other, and our world.
What to expect from the Wide-Awakeness Project
All subscribers to my Substack [subscribe here] can expect a weekly newsletter — Weekly-Wide Awake. Weekly Wide-Awake is a newsletter committed to living in and of. Living in and of means paying deep attention, building and creating, listening and sharing, falling apart and back together — again and again — together. Living in and of means exploring our light and our dark, understanding our interconnectedness and our interdependence, and celebrating our creativity and our joy. Living in and of means love is a verb.
About Katie
Born in 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.
