[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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I am the Apsara’s daughter
for Soriya
I wander in her forest / hearing ankle bells jingle with each step,/ the universe at her feet and hands./ I want to touch her./ She flies in my house in paintings/ with petals of orange blossom raining from the/ ceiling./ With her base-relief tattooed on my skin/ I worry I have offended the deity.
from “I am the Apsara’s daughter” by Sokunthary Shay
I met Ganesha, the Hindu guardian of beginnings and remover of obstacles, in 1998. My search for Ganesha has continued ever since. My trip to Bali. My wedding. My home. Ganesha is part of my everyday life. When I get my first tattoo, it will be of Ganesha.
I understand Shay’s connection with the Apsara through my connection with Ganesha. The Apsara is the embodiment of beauty, music, and womanhood. Her rhythm is that of a mother and muse. Beauty, music, and womanhood are fluid and complex. Beginnings and obstacles are fluid and complex, too. Stillness and knowing are required to find joy in it all.
My mind returns to Ganesha and the promise of beginnings and obstacles. There is beauty, music, and womanhood — the divine feminine — there. We are daughters of the divine feminine.
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.
