[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: An Invitation To Brave Space
We have the responsibility to examine what we think we know.
from Beth Strano’s “Invitation to Brave Space”
We will not be perfect.
This space will not be perfect.
It will not always be what we wish it to be.
But
It will be our brave space together,
and
We will work on it side by side.
In a world where some people are sooo wrong and I am usually sooo right, it is hard to examine what I think I know. (Examining what I think I know feels fundamental to building brave space in my life.) In a world where safe spaces are often mocked, an invitation to build a brave space may seem quaint or even impossible. In a world consumed by exploiting division and hate and cruelty, brave spaces ask us to wrap our arms around it all and create something else.
What are brave spaces? (I want to speak them into being.) Everyone feels safe in brave spaces. (Many people are not safe in our world and that must change.) Brave spaces are big enough to include everyone and generous enough to know we are all our past, present, and future. Comfort in brave spaces is our dreams and stories and experience. Brave spaces are flexible and open to changed minds and soft hearts. Brave spaces trust science. Brave spaces speak truth in love.
Building brave space has never been more important. I accept the invitation.
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.
