[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: How to Summer
A Blessing for telling the truth (no matter how bitter or sweet)/ Blessed are you for resisting the urge to reframe. You who are sick and tired of silver linings./ Blessed are you, speaking honestly about what is right in front of you: This is hard./ Things might not get better./ This really has gone horribly./ There may not be a different way./ You who risk honesty, especially when the world around us craves a brightside./ Blessed are we in our gratitude and our pain, our pleasures and our limitations. Blessed are we, the truth-tellers. Whose candor finds a chorus that echoes back: “Same.”/ May we feel ourselves answered by this language of love, change where we can, confirmed where we can’t./ But loved, loved, loved all the same.
Kate Bowler
Summer is a time for truth. For burn. For growth. For change. When I gathered these poems, the historical, political, sociological, philosophical, theological context of this week had not unfolded. (Unless you consider, in many ways, the context of this week has been unfolding for generations.) Either way, we are at a moment of truth. We are at a moment when we must tell the truth. We are at a moment when we must care for and love one another. We are at a moment when we must celebrate and protect our interdependence and freedom. We are at a moment when we must imagine and create the beloved community.
It is fitting that this past week was the summer solstice. Our days are the longest they will be this year. Long days give us time to reflect and plan and act. Long days give us time to become strong and know and use our strength for good. Long days give us time for gratitude and pain, pleasure and limitations. Long days give us time to be truth-tellers and lovers.
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.
