[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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Folk Song
Let me enter the afterlife lithe not plodding.
Diane Suess, Folk Song
I believe in an afterlife. I never plod. Sometimes I crawl. I sometimes cry. Sometimes I climb. Sometimes I dance. Sometimes I sing. I never plod. When I feel myself beginning to plod, forget to breathe because breathing hurts, grow numb at the enormity of it all, clench my fists and heart in anger, coil like a snake being pursued by a predator, I sit. I sit as many times as it takes to remember. I sit as many times as it takes to pay attention. I sit as many times as it takes for knowing to rest within me.
I embrace the hyphen — the dates between when I arrived and when I will leave my flesh and bones. That is my deepest desire. To be lithe in a world of hard edges. To be lithe and seep through cracks. To be lithe when vulnerability and kindness are the difficult path. To be lithe when the I am not yet is unclear and certainty flirts with questions.
Let me not plod. Let me pay attention while making peace with fear and doubt. Let me be grateful for it all. Let me not plod through seasons. Let me not plod as I find joy and awe and wonder.
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.
