[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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River
It’s coming on Christmas
From Joni Mitchell’s “River” from Blue
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh, I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
A river can take us away from our pain or right through it. I grew up on a river. Any mention of a river immediately conjures thoughts of home. My feet flew away from the river at a young age. Part search. Part journey. Part flow. Part need. Part vision. My feet always take me back. Part stillness. Part reconciliation. Part connection. Part grounding. Part healing. Mostly love.
You understand things if you grow up on a river. You understand upriver and downriver. You understand current. You understand the fog burns off, generally, by noon. You understand ebb and flow. You understand seasons — freezing in the winter, thawing in spring, crawling in summer, and catching leaves in fall. You understand river sounds — calliopes, barges, birds, water falls. It all makes river sense.
Christmas can take us right back to our rivers. Let me explain. We all have rivers. We all have home. We all find joy and peace in particular ways. We all are better (and worse) at finding, building, and sustaining joy and peace at different times in our lives. Christmas — in the very gentlest and most loving of ways — can help us find joy and peace.
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.
