[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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The Art of Drowning
I wonder how it all got started, this business
From Billy Collins’ “The Art of Drowning“
about seeing your life flash before your eyes
while you drown, as if panic, or the act of submergence,
could startle time into such compression, crushing
decades in the vice of your desperate, final seconds.
I am not sure I believe in near death experiences. I am not sure that I believe in walking towards the light. I am not sure I believe in a separate moment when we see all we have done and been and hoped to be become in one big stupendous flash. I know I don’t believe drowning happens all at once. I know I don’t believe in paying too much attention to the end and missing all the rest. I know I don’t believe in death filled with a lot of pomp and circumstance.
Perhaps the art of drowning is staying hydrated and wearing sunscreen. Perhaps the art of drowning is finding poetry and prayer in unexpected places. Perhaps the art of drowning is humility and kindness. Perhaps the art of drowning is doing what you love, often. Perhaps the art of drowning is remaining soft in a hard world. Perhaps the art of drowning is living in such a way that each day matters and every breath counts and we leave the world better than we found it.
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.
