[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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My Periodic Table
“And now, at this juncture, when death is no longer an abstract concept, but a presence – an all-to-close, not-to-be-denied presence, I am again surrounding myself, as I did when I was a boy with metals and minerals, little emblems of eternity.”
Oliver Sacks
“My Periodic Table,” the third essay in Oliver Sacks, Gratitude, pays homage to his connection to the natural world. From a star-filled night sky, to lemurs hanging from trees, to musings about scientific discoveries, Sacks celebrates the natural world down to its very elemental essence. He names every birthday in honor of the element corresponding to the year and beautifully describes the lead (82 years old – the last birthday he has celebrated) and bismuth (83 years old – the birthday he will not see). With life’s light preparing to go out, Sacks reminds us to slow down and look inside.
I want to call this elemental gratitude. Elemental gratitude asks us to make a list of things that inspire wonder. Elemental gratitude asks us to be present in a rigorous and methodological sense. Elemental gratitude asks us to consider the experiential and eternal. Elemental gratitude asks us to connect with the essential and the ethereal. Elemental gratitude is hopeful in the way that discoveries are made and new understandings are reached.
This celebration feels important right now: like remembering that the ocean tide rolls in and out, that salmon swim upstream, and that flowers bloom. Elemental gratitude feels real, and solid, and abiding. Bigger than injustice, war, and disease. That must be celebrated.
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.
