[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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Late Echo
Only then can the chronic inattention
From “Late Echo” by John Ashbery
Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory
And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows
That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge
Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.
I suffer from chronic inattention. I study wide-awakeness because I struggle to stay awake. I consider the beginner’s mind and the beauty of empty bowls because certainty and consumption are seductive. I think about wonder and the love of all that is because I can be dull and frustrated and angry so easily.
It all seems so simple.
I am thinking about spring snow. There is something about spring snow. I have seen snow a gazillion times in my life. This snow is specific. It has a wet and muffled sound. It hangs on flowered trees like lace on a beautiful bride. Not too much falls, so it gently covers the grass and my windshield and does not stick on the road. It asks me to pause, not stop. I this snow reminds me of sledding and snow balls and winter familiar. At the same time, it feels peculiar. It speaks to the importance of reexamination, to slowing down to the pace of the authentic, to falling in love with snow again.
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.
