[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: Remember Me Beautiful
Remember me beautiful. Remember me young. Remember me smiling my face turn toward the sun. Remember happy when you remember what was. But most of all, remember my love.
Brandy Clark — Remember Me Beautiful
Looking toward 2023, I have decided to change the focus of Weekly Wide-Awake in the new year. I plan on making the weekly newsletter a greatest hits of a few podcasts, essays, videos, poems, and posts I want to share. The month of December I will share a few of my favorite past Weekly Wide-Awakes.
Brandy Clark’s “Remember Me Beautiful,” written as part of the NPR song project in 2020, allows me to consider both the grief and the beauty of years passing. Of bodies aging and the gentle grace that requires.
The essay, What a fig tree taught me about the fragility of life, by Karen Attiah, reminds me of the solace I find in slowing down. It reminds me of the grief of the pandemic and how our lives have forever changed. It is a testament to the connection between gratitude and life’s preciousness.
In the Year That’s Come and Gone, a poem by William Ernest Henley, helps me hold both yesterday and tomorrow in gentle grace. There is hope in the lighting of our lamps and keeping watch of life together.
The Long View, an On Being conversation with social activist and teacher Karen Murphy, gives me tools for a way forward in this time where both truth and reconciliation are needed.
In the midst of it all — of loses and wins, joy and suffering, light and dark — I ask a few questions. 3 questions to ask yourself about everything you do, Stacey Abrams’ TED talk delivered in December of 2018, provides a conceptual frame for inspiration, determination, resilience, and change.
In Truth, I think about the importance of truth in our lives.
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.
