Evie Hemphill
Evie Hemphill joined the St. Louis on the Air team in February 2018. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 2005, she started her career as a reporter for the Westminster Window in Colorado. Several years later she went on to pursue graduate work in creative writing at the University of Wyoming and moved to St. Louis upon earning an MFA in the spring of 2010. She worked as writer and editor for Washington University Libraries until 2014 and then spent several more years in public relations for the University of Missouri–St. Louis before making the shift to St. Louis Public Radio.
When she’s not helping to produce the talk show, Evie can typically be found navigating the city sans car, volunteering for St. Louis BWorks or trying to get the majority of the dance steps correct as a member of the Thunder & Lightning Cloggers of Southern Illinois. She’s married to Joe, cat-mom to Dash and rather obsessive about doubt, certitude and the places where refuge and risk intersect.
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For many of us, mastering muting, unmuting and other basics of virtual work and schooling has proved to be a challenge on top of everything else this past year. But St. Louisan Susanne Evens and her team of translators around the world have been busy in recent months tackling a different challenge: how to make large-scale, international gatherings possible, and still understandable, in a virtual age.
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As the pandemic drags on and many people settle further into a more virtual world, others are in their 11th month of continually interacting with members of the public and risking their own health to help keep people supplied with food and other necessities. In this segment of "St. Louis on the Air," we hear from several of those workers.
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About four miles south of the Gateway Arch, near the riverfront in south St. Louis, sits a hospital with a long and troubled history — and what its new leaders hope will be a much brighter future. Best known for being the location of the only documented exorcism in the United States, the hospital is now benefiting from a new vision for serving the community that surrounds it.
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A new report from the Riverfront Times puts the disparity in stark contrast: While Missouri inmates on average spend less than four years in prison, some of the state’s nonviolent drug offenders are still serving decades-long, no-parole terms. In this segment, host Sarah Fenske spoke with the RFT's Danny Wicentowski and Republican state Rep. Cheri Toalson Reisch, and heard from two men who recently had their sentences commuted by Gov. Mike Parson.
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On Wednesday's "St. Louis on the Air," we heard from two struggling tenants at the Fountains at Carondelet as well as Lee Camp, an attorney with ArchCity Defenders. Kennard Williams, a lead organizer with Action St. Louis and active member of the St. Louis Housing Defense Collective, joined host Sarah Fenske throughout the discussion, and also interacted with callers.
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After Walter Parks started researching his musical and cultural roots in southeast Georgia, he found a treasure trove of material in the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. The library had preserved field recordings of homesteaders in the Okefenokee Swamp region, where Parks remembers camping and exploring as a kid. The writer, guitarist and vocalist joined "St. Louis on the Air" to share stories and tunes ahead of his show at the Blue Strawberry.
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The year 2021 is shaping up to be a pivotal one in St. Louis politics — with both a new mayor being chosen and a new system of approval voting being pioneered. But the big shifts won’t stop with this spring’s elections: The city is also set to reduce its number of wards from 28 to 14, ultimately shrinking the size of the Board of Aldermen by half.
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Allyson Mayer, a computational biologist for the St. Louis startup, is particularly hopeful about a current project she hopes will help COVID-19 "long-haulers."
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Bubonic plague. Influenza. The Red Death. An infection of zombies. For humanities scholar Marie Lathers, reading fiction about these and other pandemics has proved to be a surprisingly comforting experience over the past year. And now, she's leading a group of Missouri S&T students on a similar journey.
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With Sunday's big game looming, Jeremy Housewright and Kendel Beard joined "St. Louis on the Air" host Sarah Fenske to share their perceptions of Chiefs fandom growth in the St. Louis region and what sets the Kansas City team apart.