[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: Having a Coke with You
I look/ at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
From Frank O’Hara’s “Having a Coke with You“
Love is about having a Coke together. Love is about paying attention and being amazed and telling about it. Love is about simple things and everyday choices. Love is about what we see and how we spend our time. Love is about sharing and generosity. Love is about specifics and details. Love is about the awe of bigger than life. Love is about the people we want to tell our thoughts.
The most precious, romantic, abiding, hearts and flowers kind of love is as strong as diamonds. Let me explain. There is a love that is beyond language. It exists within the heart of desire. It exists outside of ego’s armor. Images can try to capture it. Art and music can get close. Love breaks bonds of time as it both instant and eternal. It breaks bonds of space as it both holds and carries and frees. It breaks the bonds of understanding as it listens and forgives and grows. It breaks the bonds of energy as it lives and endures and lasts. The essence of love is peace and intimacy and vulnerability.
Love knows things. Love knows what matters and what does not. Love knows the jugular and leaves it alone. Love sees at life’s absurdities and cries at its cruelty. Love is soft and fierce. Love tells the truth. I am convinced love sounds like a cat’s purr or baby’s giggle or Joni Mitchell. Maybe it smells like a stargazer lily or homemade chocolate chip cookies or clean sheets or the perfume I was given on my birthday. Maybe it feels like Chantilly lace or clouds or clay. Maybe it tastes like red wine or sushi or pizza or a Coke with the one you love.
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.
