[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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from “The Land”
“That was a spring of storms.”
From Vita Sackville-West’s “The Land”
My recent years have all been riddled with storms. Storms of all kinds. Perhaps that is the nature of the falling apart and coming together, the chaos and order, the terror and beauty of life. Storms. One after the other. Relentless in their constancy. Shocking in their breadth and depth. The sounds of screams and lamentations and whispers. Made of star dust and ash and scar tissue. Their strength sure.
I am sure there have always been storms — earth shaking, tree unearthing, building leveling storms. It just seems like the gravity and weight of now feels like more. I don’t think that I am the only person to feel like now is more. There is comfort in the communion of sadness, anger, and fear. There is hope in the idea that we walk through storms holding hands, connected by our love. Vulnerability is easier in a pack.
Spring storms are particularly profound. Set against the backdrop of life emerging, a spring storm is about change and growth, life and death, ebb and flow, sleeping and waking up. Spring storms are foundations shifting. Spring storms are the lights being turned on. Spring storms are the million shades of grey and green and yellow. Spring storms are a beginning, and beginnings come with the all the joy of anticipation, the anxiety of the unknown, and the force of pent up energy. Spring storms wash away, move, and clear. That is their beauty.
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.
