[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
Enter your email here to receive Weekly Wide-Awake
back
Sam Stone
Sweet songs never last too long on broken radios
From John Prine’s “Sam Stone“
I long for sweet sounds.
Sweet songs like music writ large. Sweet songs like children’s laughter. Sweet songs like a cat’s purr. Sweet songs like the song of a bee or frog or cricket or elephant or whale. Sweet songs like a dear friend’s voice. Sweet songs like waves crashing. Sweet songs like clouds blowing. Sweet songs like a timer letting me know red velvet cupcakes are ready to be taken from the oven. Sweet songs like a steamboat calliope during Derby Week. Sweet songs like snow falling. Sweet songs like sunrise. Sweet songs like starlight. Sweet songs like kindness, forgiveness, vulnerability, and care. Sweet songs like curiosity, generosity, creativity, and honesty. Sweet songs like truth.
Is the question of how do we hear those sweet songs simply one of fixing our broken radios? I am not sure. What I know for sure is life is sweeter when we hear sweet songs. When we aren’t too busy or angry or anxious or afraid or alone to hear. When we are healthy enough to simply change the channel when the static and noise overwhelms. When we are soft and open and awake to hear it all. When the I am, not yet, as if, and why not dance to the music we hear.
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.
