[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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Digging
Between my finger and my thumb
from Seamus Heaney’s “Digging“
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Writing is a powerful act. Like an archeologist excavates. Like an astronomer discovers. Like a cartographer maps. Like an architect designs. Like an artist creates. Like a farmer plants and harvests.
When I read Heaney’s account of writing, I think back to time spent in my grandfather’s garden. As a child, I used to help my grandfather in his garden. He farmed about 2 acres of land on family property. Every summer, tomatoes, green beans, corn, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, and okra and several other crops for good measure. I learned to be gentle with green bean plants. I learned exactly where to dig on a potato mound. I learned when a tomato is ripe and ready to pick. (He planted 400 tomato plants a year, so I had a lot of practice.) I learned to rotate crops so they have rich soil.
There are the lessons of digging. Of sowing and reaping. Of perfect timing and patience. Of inhale and exhale. Of paying attention and seeing. Of root and stem. Of flower and fruit.
Writing is about all that. It is about unearthing truth and stories. It is about planting the seeds of words. It is about things that live and die. It is about clearing and tending. It is about walking the rows every day. It is about generations and passing things down. It is about digging.
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.
