[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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What the Living Do
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,/ say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep/ for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:/ I am living. I remember you.
Marie Howe, “What the Living Do”
The living fall apart and back together.
Falling apart and back together looks like doing the laundry and taking a bath. Falling apart and back together looks like making meals and fixing things that break. Falling apart and back together looks like grieving loss and celebrating gain. The falling apart looks and back together looks like stitching and mending. The falling apart and back together looks like deep breaths again and again and again.
The living fall apart and back together.
The falling apart and back together happens at home. The home of our body. The home of our mind. The home of our family. The home of our community. The home of our earth.
The living fall apart and back together.
Home is seasons and tides. Home is root and the bud. Home is hard and soft. Home is impermanent and everlasting. Home is doors and windows. Home is ebb and flow. Home is miraculous and everyday. Home is light and dark.
Howe understands home. She understands the ease at which we can lose sight of what is in the longing for what was or will be — the lamenting for where we have been, are, or will be, the grasping for certainty in a world of quicksand and stardust. She asks us to look deeper, walk through doors, see our reflections in mirrors, and remember. She asks us to be grateful for it all, for home in all its truth.
About Katie
From 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.
