[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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Weekly Wide-Awake: A Celebration of Poetry and Spring
April is National Poetry Month. In celebration of poetry and spring, I listened to a 2016 On Being conversation with Mary Oliver, “I got saved by the beauty of the world.” As I walked through Piedmont Park, a large park in the heart of Atlanta, I really heard her words. It was my second time hearing this conversation. Through the years, Oliver has reminded me to pay attention, be amazed, and tell about it. She shows me how to walk through life with a notebook looking for nature’s perfect timing. She breathes into life’s birth and death. The conversation was consolation for the sadness I have been experiencing. Sadness as longing for solid ground in quick sand. Sadness as loss of connection beyond myself that I grasp with both hands as I walk in nature, read and listen, reach out, and build and create. Sadness as the passage of time that happens like the tides, the sun and moon, and seasons.
Maybe that is the gift of poetry and spring. Hope and promise. Beauty and rhythm. Solace and stillness. Truth and not yet. Grace and new.
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.
