[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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A Quaker Legacy: Ten Life Lessons
Have the patience to be silent and listen for truth. Then have the courage to let the best that is in you direct your actions. Recognize that your true identity is nothing more or less than the way your conduct your public and private affairs – the way in which, for good or for ill, you let your life speak.
Robert Lawrence Smith
In the “Epilogue” to A Quaker Book of Wisdom: Life Lessons in Simplicity, Service, and Common Sense, Robert Lawrence Smith describes 10 Quaker life lessons. They are: 1. Seize the present. 2. Love yourself. 3. Stop talking and listen to what you really know. 4. Play soccer! (or whatever team sport you love) 5. Accept the fact that our lives are only partly in our own hands. 6. Believe in the perfectibility of yourself and society. 7. Make your love visible in the world through your work. 8. Seek justice in the world, but not in your own life. 9. Look for the light of God in every person. 10. Let your life speak.
Carefully woven in these life lessons are Quaker ideas that make a lot of sense to me. Love is an active, visible, force for peace and justice in our world. Way opens when we listen, that includes, importantly, our vocation. We are meant to be in community with one another – seeing the light of God — the Divine spark — in every person. Choose presence and hope and faith. Let your life speak.
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.
