William Stage

Wm. Stage, also known as William Stage (born June 30, 1951) is an American journalist, author, and photographer, with a focus on the area and history of the American Midwest and St. Louis, Missouri. From 1982 to 2004 he worked for the weekly newspaper The Riverfront Times, producing three columns, with the best known being Street Talk, where over the years he photographed and interviewed more than 8,500 random individuals about miscellaneous topics. He is also known for his documentary work on a special kind of historical outdoor advertising: vintage brick wall signs. As of 2025, he has authored 16 books, a combination of photography, non-fiction, and fiction. His photographs have appeared in multiple works, including the cover photograph on the Oxford University Press book, For the Common Good. In 2001, Stage, who had been adopted as an infant, tracked down his biological family, a search which led to a Canadian television documentary and formed the basis for his 2009 memoir Fool for Life.

Early life

Wm. Stage was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan to an unwed mother who immediately turned him over to the Catholic sisters of St. Agnes Foundling Home. At three months he was adopted and taken to Grand Rapids, the only child of Bill and Virginia Stage. In 1969, he graduated from Catholic Central High School, and soon enlisted in the U.S. Army, doing a tour in Germany as a medical corpsman / ambulance driver. While there he attended the University of Maryland Evening Division, studying English composition and German language. After his discharge he attended Grand Valley State College in Allendale, Michigan on the G.I. Bill; in 1976 he received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree.

Epidemiologist In 1978, at the age of 26, while working as an ambulance driver in Grand Rapids, he was recruited by Atlanta's Centers For Disease Control and assigned to the St. Louis City Health Department as a public health officer. For five years he was charged with interviewing those infected with STDs, primarily gonorrhea and syphilis, identifying their sexual contacts, and ensuring that all were properly treated. His work involved identifying which diseases were in the population, and when/if other new diseases were appearing. It was during this period, the early 1980s, when HIV/AIDS first appeared, so Stage and his colleagues saw from a clinical perspective the damage done by this disease. This exposure became the basis for his novel, Creatures on Display (2015). In 2010, father and daughter collaborated again with the publication of The Painted Ad: A Postcard Book of Vintage Brick Wall Signs. which wholesales art and novelty postcards to bookstores and museum gift shops, while Floppinfish Publishing Company Ltd. is a small-scale book publisher.

In 2001, at the age of 50, Stage found his natural family, first making contact with his biological mother and her children, and later making contact with the offspring of his late biological father. His lifelong identity as an only child was suddenly altered; he now had a "new family," a second set of relatives including a mother, seven half-brothers and sisters as well as numerous aunts and cousins scattered throughout the eastern United States and Nova Scotia. In 2004, Stage was the subject of an episode of "Past Lives," a documentary-style show on Canadian TV that focuses on people in search of their roots. The half-hour program, filmed on Cape Breton Island, ran Canada-wide and was seen in re-runs for four years. These events were humorously chronicled in a December 2003 cover story in The Riverfront Times and formed the core of Stage's comic memoir Fool For Life. Five years in the writing, Fool was well received by both the reading public and critics alike and bolstered Stage's reputation as a prose humorist.

In 2007, Stage began voicing guest commentaries on KWMU-FM, the NPR affiliate in St. Louis. Topics ranged from the folly of Daylight Saving Time to the joys of ice skating.

In 2010, Stage's prose turned from creative nonfiction to fiction. The next 14 years saw a collection of short stories such as "Not Waving Drowning" (2011), followed by five novels. The first, Creatures on Display (2015), is a comic noir look at an in-the-trenches band of investigators trying to get a handle on a mysterious malady plaguing the St. Louis social scene in the early 1980s. It is based on his experience as an STD epidemiologist during his years of working for the CDC.

No Big Thing (2018) is an historical novel based on the Ku Klux Klan’s bid to join Missouri’s Adopt-A-Highway program, being rejected, and having the case go to the Missouri Supreme Court.

Stage also delved into crime fiction, penning three novels featuring Francis X. Lenihan, an intrepid St. Louis process server and his pals from Murphy's Bar: St. Francis Of Dogtown (2019), A Friend of King Neptune (2023), and Down And Out in the River City (2025). The second novel, A Friend of King Neptune (2023), took first prize in 2023 in the adult fiction category of the Indie Author Project, and was featured in the Library Journal December 2023 Issue, “Best Books". In a 2020 Reader’s Poll from STL Today, St. Francis of Dogtown took first in the category "Favorite New Book by a St. Louis Author," and Stage himself won in the category "Favorite Current Louis Author".

Photography As of 2024, Stage has authored five books on photography, largely falling into the genre of street photography. While doing a popular column for The Riverfront Times, "Street Talk," Stage posed quirky or philosophical man-on-the-street questions to unwitting subjects, of whom he also obtained a photo. Overall, he captured more than 8,500 faces on film,

In 2014, a retrospective, William Stage: Photographs and Assemblages, was exhibited at the Sheldon Concert Hall & Art Galleries in St. Louis.

Personal Wm. Stage lives in St. Louis with his wife, Mary, and five of their daughters. He has been a special process server since 1998.

Works As of 2024, Stage has authored 16 books, a combination of photography, fiction, and non-fiction.

Photographic

Ghost Signs: Brick Wall Signs in America Pictures Of People The Painted Ad: A Postcard Book of Vintage Brick Wall Signs with Margaret Stage Fading Ads of St. Louis Welcome To Old Ripley / I was Looking For A Bar

Nonfiction

Fiction / memoir

Fool For Life Not Waving, Drowning Creatures On Display – A Novel No Big Thing – A Novel St. Francis Of Dogtown – A Novel A Friend Of King Neptune — A Novel Down And Out In The River City — A Novel

As contributor

Photographs appear in St. Louis: Home On The River – Urban Tapestry Series – Towery Publishing Inc., 1995 Photographs appear in St. Louis: For The Record – Urban Tapestry Series – Towery Publishing Inc., 1999 Cover photograph "Three Of A Kind" appears on For the Common Good? American Civic Life and the Golden Age of Fraternity – Jason Kaufman, author – Oxford University Press Inc. 2002 Photographs appear in Outhouses – Holly L. Bollinger, author – MBI Publishing Company, 2005 Photographs appear in St. Louis Seen & Unseen – Michael Kilfoy, author – Virginia Publishing, 2006 Introduction to Fading Ads of New York City – Frank Jump, author – The History Press, 2011 Photograph “Harvey’s Sandwich System, St. Louis, Missouri 1979” chosen as cover image of Lire de materialisme, Charles T. Wolfe, author. ENS Editions, Paris, France, 2020