[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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Weekly Wide-Awake: Forming
“Forming—bringing what you imagined into three-dimensional reality.”
Martha Beck
I have been forming my entire life. Forming is a perfect name (thank you Martha Beck) for the process my heart has always seemed to understand. I have always listened to my still strong voice. I have always been a creator of things. I have always been profoundly curious and generally generous. I have always woven a life fabric of introspection and extroversion. I have always had a sense of purpose during times of falling apart and coming back together, though the falling apart times — when life feels like skiing behind a jet boat or the last stretch of a Tough Mudder competition — have required I hold on to my purpose with both hands.
What does forming mean? Forming means to call into existence with such phenomenal specificity that what is can be touched, tasted, seen, and felt. Forming means to connect with truth so deeply that you know it in your bones. Forming means to create from the breadth of ideas something bigger than your imagination. Forming means to embrace feelings of fear and doubt and anger making them coconspirators on a path to radical joy.
About Katie
Born in 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.
