[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: Poem for a New Year
I’ve tracked myself from day to day/ how many steps through a field of snow/ how many hours have I slept/ what have I eaten/what did I burn/calories or cigarettes/ what birds have poured/ through Bellefontaine/ where mausoleums bear the names/ of Busch and Brown/ Lemp and Spink/ on marble white as winter endive/ when I can read my title clear/ to mansions in the skies/ what have I read/ how many words/ what facts/ statistics biometrics/ what data aggregation/ what news/ of wins and losses/ getting and spending/ each dawn a color wheel/ to gauge the shifting moods/ the daylight sunk in trees/ an index of attraction/ According to the Tao Te Ching/ each day brings more/ and more of less/ less and still less/ with no end to nothing/ and nothing left undone/ Even here in Bellefontaine/ along a winding street/ silence brings an interval/ of yet more distant sound/ trucks along the interstate/ a plane behind the clouds.
Devin Johnston – Poem for a New Year
On the last week of this year that was a wave on the ocean that crashes the soul, I looked behind me and before me. In the spirit of reflection, resilience, and celebration, I considered a few of my past Words of the Year – Surrender, Truth, Transformation, and Deciduous. I answered Marie Forleo’s end-of-year questions. I decided my 2021 Word of the Year: Health.
Taken together, this Weekly-Wide Awake is my Poem for a New Year. Much like Johnston talks about tracking and burning and shifting, my Words of the Year mark where my thoughts have been over time. They help me understand what I want to keep and what to let go. They remind me that the center always holds even in the midst of the roughest storm. They provide guide posts for the answers and goals. That feels important going into 2021.
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.
