[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
Weekly Wide Awake: Elizabeth Gilbert and Creativity
“You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.”
Elizabeth Gilbert
I have chosen to focus on Elizabeth Gilbert and creativity this week for several reasons. Reading Eat, Pray, Love, many years ago, challenged me. It challenged me to make writing a more central part of my life. It challenged me to travel and open up to our huge, amazing, beautiful world. It challenged me to center love within my life. It challenged me to know that in centering love, I love the world. I am truly grateful for the cosmic invitation offered in the text.
The creativity gauntlet was thrown down.
Today, I have written daily for the better part of 15 years. This week, I move into the first home I have owned in my 51 years. Today, I am happily married continuing to learn about myself, intimacy, and vulnerability every day. Today I pay more attention to joy, awe, wonder, beauty, and breath.
I want to suggest creativity is the relentless pursuit of our own blessings. Building, forging, shaping, carrying, seeing, tasting, holding, freeing, surrendering — it is how we create our world. Being able to do all that is a blessing. Creativity is how I know I am never stuck in the concrete of yesterday’s story. It is how I know I am never lost in the abyss of my own fear or doubt. It is how curiosity manifests, and curiosity is the lifeblood of learning. It is the intersection of desire and experience. It gives shape to my imagination. It connects scar tissue and stars.
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.
