[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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Love at the Five and Dime
And they’d sing
From Nanci Griffith, “Love At The Five and Dime”
Dance a little closer to me, dance a little closer now
Dance a little closer tonight
Dance a little closer to me, ’cause it’s closing time
And love’s on sale tonight at this five and dime
I want to dance through life in love with it all. I want to hold joy close. I want to feel the syncopation and rhythm of it all as electricity pulses through my veins. I want to be alive in a way that remembers and celebrates. I want to breathe it all in and taste a miracle. Being in love is living big. It is romantic, compassionate, fierce, abundant, soft, and expansive. The bigger the definition of being in love is the better. It’s about being in love with life, rather than any one person, place, or thing.
Being in love is as simple as a couple dancing. It might sound difficult — like something that is rehearsed and memorized and perfected — but it is not. It is as simple as warmth and connection. It is as simple as release and perfect timing. It is as simple as passion and intuition. It is as simple as playfulness and joy. Being in love gets tricky when vulnerability and honesty and trust come into play. Being in love relies on all that. Things that have no room in being in love: shame, fear, anger. To be in love, we must feel all of it in our bones, appreciate every hard lesson learned, and set it free, way down deep. That freedom allows space for being in love to enter.
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.
