[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: Notebook 2021
“I was so willing to pull a page out of my notebook, a day, several bright days and live them as if I was only alive, thirsty, timeless, young enough, to do this one more time, to dare to have nothing so much to lose and to feel that potential dying of the self in the light as the only thing I thought that was spiritual, possible and because I had no other way to call that mind, I called it poetry, but it was flesh and time and bread and friends frightened and free enough to want to have another day that way, tear another page.”
— Eileen Myles, Excerpted from “Notebook, 1981”
This week, the Weekly Wide-Awake is taking a different form. Over the years, Weekly Wide-Awake has been a combination of things. It has been curated links to favorite podcasts, essays, poetry, and music. It has been highlights of things I have written over the years. It has been reflections on current events and happenings in our world. Most often, it has be a weekly collection of daily posts. This week, it is a bit of it all.
I have never been comfortable calling the Weekly Wide-Awake a newsletter. “News” does not accurately describe what it is, or maybe “news” does not describe what I want it to be. When I came across this passage from Eileen Myles about notebooks, something clicked. I want to try on Weekly Wide-Awake as a notebook — weekly tearing of pages that explores: things that I love, things that make me think, things I find beautiful, things that shed light or hope or grace, things that reflect or commemorate or celebrate. Somewhere in the middle of all that, is wide-awakeness.
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.
