[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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Weekly Wide-Awake: A certain slant of Light
Winter Afternoons – / That oppresses, like the Heft/ Of Cathedral Tunes – / Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – / We can find no scar,/ But internal difference – / Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any – / ‘Tis the seal Despair – / An imperial affliction / Sent us of the Air –
When it comes, the Landscape listens – / Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, ’tis like the Distance / On the look of Death
Emily Dickinson – There’s a certain Slant of light, (320)
This week marks both the winter solstice and Christmas. I decided to look to poets to celebrate the occasions. In addition to the Dickinson piece above, I included Annie Finch’s Winter Solstice Chant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Holidays, Pablo Neruda’s Ode to My Socks, Greg Delanty’s A New Law, Clement Clark Moore’s A Visit From St. Nicholas, and Madeleine L’Engle’s First Coming.
I am feeling the paradox of sadness and joy, of hope and desperation, of darkness and light deeply this year. I feel Dickinson’s “heft of cathedral tunes” as I consider what this Moment has meant for so many. Perhaps I support Delanty’s new law banning all holidays because too many have been lost in this Moment, but my heart is not there. It is more in the timely and gentle slumber of Finch’s winter which comes after a lengthy and painful Moment for our world, or in Longfellow’s reflection on the quiet solitude that can be found in holidays, or in traditions like Clark Moore’s visit from St. Nicholas. L’Engle’s call to welcome love into our broken world makes sense to me, too. In all of this, as Neruda points out, “beauty is twice beauty and what is good is doubly good when it is a matter of two socks made of wool in winter.”
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.
