[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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Maps
There are names each thing has for itself,
from “Maps” by Linda Hogan
and beneath us the other order already moves.
It is burning.
It is dreaming.
It is waking up.
Maps fascinate me. As a child, maps meant we were going somewhere on vacation. When I moved to Washington State, I bought a satellite map of the Pacific Northwest to see the ocean and the mountains living side-by-side just to situate me in my new home. When I moved to Miami, I bought a map marking shipwrecks in the Keys because shipwrecks have become a place where new life emerges in the Florida Reef, and that feels both miraculous and hopeful. When I was in New Zealand, feeling a whole lot of lost, I had to see the Southern Cross. Stars were maps for explorers. If stars were good enough for them, maybe they could help me find my way, too.
Change is constant in life, and maps provide a few coordinates — names and order. They provide structure to chaos. They burn, dream, and wake up. Maps are there to follow when I can’t quite see the way. Satellites, careful illustrations, and stars guide. That seems important. Guidance seems important in this world where blind certainty is foolish and doubt can yield paralysis. Home is the point.
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.
