[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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Amazed Mouth
The soul: a wide listening sky/ with thousands of candles: when// anything is sold, soul gets given/ in the cash: people waiting at a/ door, a ladder leaning on a roof,/ someone climbing down, the market/ square bright with understanding./ Listening opens its amazed mouth.
Rumi
The personification of Listening makes me think. What would Listening look like? What words would fall from Listening’s mouth? Would Listening talk at all? (Talking isn’t the point of listening. Right?)
What if Listening is a hummingbird. Industrious and able to light just long enough. Fleeting but not aloof. Colorful and never boring. Earnest and straight shooting. Tiny and powerful. Quiet born of focus and speed. Cheerful because she does not have the time to worry.
What would she say? She would not say much. Her words would be pearls. She would share only drops of sweetness that she had gathered. That is where the listening happens. That is where the understanding happens. That is where the amazement happens.
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.
