[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 the Clothesline
Not so much the missing of things/ but the nostalgia of colors, their music,/ the ordinary revelation of a family life/ caught in the flop and dance, a jig
Kwame Dawes
I have never had a clothesline. The idea that a clothesline might be the revelation of family life caught in the flop and dance, a jig makes me smile. The idea that a clothesline might also be the place where once dirty laundry can be aired might also be true. It all can be true.
I don’t know how I feel about clotheslines.
The clotheslines in my life felt like the bearing of fruit. The clotheslines in my life felt like belonging and community. The clotheslines in my life felt like milestones and traditions.
The clotheslines in my life felt somehow simultaneously joyous and petrifying.
The clotheslines in my life felt like everybody knowing everybody’s business. The clotheslines in my life felt like secrets being told. The clotheslines in my life felt like scabs being torn off.
Clotheslines forgive in the way that air breathes life. Clotheslines comfort in the way that sunshine warms. Clotheslines heal in the way that air breathes life.
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.
