Emma McClatchey

1 week ago | littlevillagemag.com | Emma McClatchey

In one of the most famous scenes in the history of theater, Romeo spies on his crush Juliet, waxing poetic about her beauty. If her eyes were to switch places with a pair of stars, he says,The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven                 Would, through the airy region, stream so brightThat birds would sing and think it were not night. Juliet goes on to deliver a far more memorable musing — “What’s in a name?

3 weeks ago | littlevillagemag.com | Emma McClatchey

Dr. Emma Denney (she/they) is the community resource navigator at the LGBTQ Iowa Archives & Library in Iowa City. She regularly tracks anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the state legislature for OneIowa, traveling to Des Moines to speak against them. She holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Iowa and makes music under the name .em. V Fixmer-Oraiz (they/them) was elected to the Johnson County Board of Supervisors in 2022, becoming the first trans, queer and biracial county supervisor in the state.

1 month ago | littlevillagemag.com | Emma McClatchey

This article is the second in a planned three-part series about Shiloh and the cult of the Living Word Fellowship. Learn more in part one. Content warning for descriptions of child abuse, including sexual assault. Titus Walker lived in Hawaii, but he flew to rural Iowa for summer camp. Growing up in an insular church community in the 1980s, it was a blast to hang out with kids his age, even if the Young Adult School of Prophets (YASP) wasn’t much of a vacation.

Feb 6, 2025 | littlevillagemag.com | Emma McClatchey

From 1990 to 2018, thousands of southeastern Iowa families flocked to an amphitheater south of Kalona for a high-budget, wholesomely patriotic Fourth of July show. The spectators (the vast majority, at least) didn’t know it, but the fireworks bursting in the sky, the near-professional song-and-dance numbers onstage and the very land they were gathered on were property of a cult.

Jan 22, 2025 | littlevillagemag.com | Emma McClatchey

What do Mormon pioneers and Caitlyn Jenner have in common? Besides a tendency towards backwards beliefs and manslaughter, they share a deep connection to the southwestern Iowa city of Lamoni (pop. 1,974). Though she grew up in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, Jenner was recruited to Lamoni’s Graceland University, a small, private religious school, in 1969 — on a football scholarship.