Evan Wood

2 weeks ago | missourilife.com | Evan Wood |Sydney Jones

As a child I used to sneak out onto the roof of our house at night and look up at the night sky. Living on a secluded plot of land in a rural part of the state, I can remember hearing all kinds of sounds emanating from the darkness around me as I sat there: the howl of coyotes, the hooting of owls, and the occasional screech of a bobcat.

1 month ago | missourilife.com | Evan Wood |Sydney Jones

A book of maps illustrates the past and present of Ferguson. How well do you know the area you live in? Are you pretty much navigating exclusively with the help of your phone’s GPS, or could you direct a wayward stranger who asks you for directions to the grocery store, the highway, or wherever they are trying to go? When we build familiarity with a specific town, neighborhood, or region, our minds build a map of that place, which can have more to do with functionality than objective reality.

2 months ago | missourilife.com | Evan Wood |Andrea Kaneko |Sydney Jones

Last fall I got the chance to travel the full course of Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica with an old friend as he researched a piece he published in Rolling Stone. When he invited me along, he’d already been researching the route for months and had created a spreadsheet with every overnight stop and the distance between each. In general, the goal was to avoid chains as much as possible for dining while taking in some of the Mother Road’s most conspicuous attractions.

2 months ago | missourilife.com | Evan Wood |Sydney Jones

For most of the 1800s and part of the 1900s there was a little town just north of St. Louis founded by former slaves, not marked on any map, and impossible for outsiders to find. That’s the premise of Phillip B. Williams’s new novel, Ours, out this year from Viking. The book takes its name from the fictional town where it is set, long since subsumed by the expansion of Lambert Field.

Jan 10, 2023 | missourilife.com | Evan Wood