[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: Indigo Girls
So I know I’m all right
From Indigo Girls “Virgina Woolf”
Life will come and life will go
Still I feel it’s all right
Cause I just got a letter to my soul
And when my whole life is on the tip of my tongue
Empty pages for the no longer young
The apathy of time laughs in my face
You say “each life has its place”
I was introduced to the Indigo Girls in the 1990’s. I immediately loved them. Everything about their music and message spoke to me. They made sense to me at a time in my life when nothing made sense. I had just finished college and thought I had it all figured out, but deep down knew I did not. I just wanted to keep moving, but not sure to what or from where. I served my community in AmeriCorps, and that made sense. I had an understanding that I had been given so much — a solid education, an abiding faith, a belief in home big enough to love my world — that it was time to take up the mantle of my adult life and do something. It was a period of profound growth. If our lives are divided into seasons, this was the beginning of my summer. Summer as a time to be a grown up. Summer as a time to dance in the sun. Summer as a time to live in brilliant blue and green and yellow. The Indigo Girls appeared like a powerful thunderbolt in a rainstorm. Shaking me to my core in the way that music does.
Flash forward 25 years, I saw them perform live for the first time this week in their “home” city of Atlanta. I cried at the first chord and truthfully never stopped. I joined in the choir of people singing along as if we had the same experiences and questions and desires. Twenty five years of musical friendship overwhelmed me. I received a letter to my soul. The playlist was a soundtrack of wisdom gained over time. It told the story of love lost and found, conscience and questions, fire and earth and everything in between. Enough rock to inspire and enough soul to move. I felt every note in my bones. Even the songs I did not know I knew by heart. I left feeling seen and heard. At this time of bone chilling isolation and fear, this concert was a moment of connection for which I am profoundly grateful. May this Weekly-Wide Awake provide a moment of solace and connection for us all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Indigo Girls.
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.
