[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 Monkey and the River
It is said a great Zen teacher asked an initiate to sit by a stream until he heard all the water had to teach. After days of bending his mind around the scene, a small monkey happened by, and, in one seeming bound of joy, splashed about in the stream. The initiate wept and returned to his teacher, who scolded him lovingly. “The monkey heard. You just listened.”
The difference between listening and hearing.
Before now, we lived between listening and hearing. We lived between work and sleep, to-do lists and loves, weekdays and weekends. The more we listened the more hard edged we became – right was right and wrong was wrong, certainty was the only truth, and clarity was the only reality – listening quieted the thunder of hearing. We plugged in or checked out. Listening was being checked out from the complexity of life. I am not judging listening, that would be to say there is no time and place for disconnecting. In fact, disconnecting makes connecting possible. I am only saying there is real value in hearing and we are being asked to hear now more than ever.
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.
