[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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Ode to Sitting in a Booth
No matter how loud/ this bar, within these three walls we can drop
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
straight into a very electric flight. We can/ pretend we don’t answer to anyone–including/ the waitress–& no one even knows where we are.
I have had conversations with strangers in restaurants and bars for as long as I can remember. I am familiar with the electric current of anonymity and ease, dancing through secrets to a place beyond trust. Trust is automatic and visceral. Protected by sparse context, we find the heartbeat of openness. Call the connection instinctual, mysterious, or curious. Oneness.
The otherworldliness of a booth defies time and space. It is part cave to explore our potential and questions together, part rebel vacation from the world, part living novel more interesting than everyday life, part stolen rendezvous with pieces of myself I have never met, and part puzzle, creating a bigger picture of a complicated world.
The language of the booth speaks. No words are needed. Just flashlights of curiosity. Poetry and courage. Cocktails and the kindness of strangers.
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.
