[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 Gate
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
From “The Gate” by Marie Howe
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.
In conversation with Marie Howe, “The Power of Words to Save Us,” Krista Tippett responded to “The Gate” saying, “It strikes me that these rituals of ordinary time themselves are a little bit like poetry, these condensed, kind of economical little packets of beauty and grace that carry so much more forward than is obvious.” Eating a grilled cheese sandwich. Peaches ripening on trees. Our cat crawling into bed trying to be as close to us as she can. Washing my face and putting on cream in the morning and night. These are rituals of ordinary time.
Tippett likens rituals of ordinary time to poetry, and extends the metaphor to suggest these rituals are prayer. I agree with her. Rituals of ordinary time are both poetry and prayer. We experience them when we pay attention. We experience them when we approach life with a reverence that need not be reserved for brick and mortar churches. We experience them in stillness and knowing. In that way, a grilled cheese is a gate.
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.
