M. And so we were literally putting together rock shows at Gabes, selling t-shirts, selling posters. I remember selling t-shirts on Hubbard Park, and sending all the money to this guy Todd so he’d print another issue. And he kind of threw it at us and he said “You guys should just run with it.”

So my friend Alissa was publisher for about three years, and then our friend Kevin took over as publisher and he did everything for one issue. He was publisher, ad sales, layout, editor, everything. For one issue—don’t give him too much credit! …no, he’s my boy. I love Kevin. Great guy, really funny, awesome musician, brilliant. Could do anything, but he didn’t want to make that his life.

Our friend Andrew Sherburne who runs Film Scene, he was helping out with design in the early days. And when Kevin had his moment of clarity, Andrew was there to pick up the pieces, catch the baby before its head hit the ground, and focus on stabilizing it. He was primarily a documentary filmmaker so this wasn’t his main focus, but he had a lot of love for it, and a lot of ability to organize and get it really stable.

We’re back to that once monthly format. I was still an orbiter, just kind of a space kid. Sometimes getting closer to the gravitational pull, sometimes getting farther away.

I. So what made you do the deep dive?

M. Right after I finished school I went away. I had a sad string of events personally, and decided to check out for a bit. I went to Korea to teach English for two years—not in Seoul, but in a small town in the mountains, where I kind of went into myself. I saved money, I got out of debt, I made a lot of art, made some music. I was working on a play. I thought, well, maybe this is what I’ll do, I’ll just travel the world and teach and try to find a meaningful thing. I really enjoy teaching. I love the relationships and I love that window into a culture that you get by going into the school.

But I ultimately had my own moment of clarity where I realized that I want to be in a community where I can just plug in and do things like pick up the phone and put on a play, have people that I know that can do sound and lighting and costumes, and have a stage that I could use; be part of a creative community where I felt at home. And I just thought “my God, why did I leave Iowa City? That place had everything for me. They had photographers, they had fellow musicians, they had all these support systems and this high quality of life.” So I came back here and that was 09'. Andrew had kid number two on the way, and his wife was like “Dude, you gotta knock it off.”

M. So they made me a web editor. I started getting our content up on the site. I started managing our social media for the first time. We were late to the game. I think I remember Andrew saying that our first web site was a MySpace page.

We had a WordPress site, and I started in my kind of lazy way updating it after our issues would come out. It got me into conversations where we were trying to start selling digital. I did a weekly newsletter trying to get our e-mail up. And suddenly I was doing a bit of design, a bit of sales, a bit of writing and editing and strategy, content strategy and found myself wearing all these hats.

But when it was time, it was just weird: Melody who was our managing editor, she had a journalism undergraduate degree, she got into the Library Science master’s program here at Iowa; Paul who was our features editor, he got into a social worker program down in St. Louis; Andrew who was our publisher, had kid number two on the way and a bunch of documentaries in the hopper; and I was the only one who didn’t have anything better going on.

So I got left. I looked up one day and all my friends were gone. And I thought “well, I guess I’m going to try to keep Little Village going.” Also an exaggeration; they were super helpful with the transition, and I was really happy to take on the torch. I didn’t fully appreciate the combination of skill sets that were involved, but I was like “yeah, sure.” I sold an ad once, I designed an ad at another time, and I’ve been writing my whole life. How hard can it be?

M. That was the summer of 2010, when I had my first issue with my name on the masthead as publisher. I remember being in Chicago with my sister when Andrew sent me the proof. Andrew was still designing it, he stayed on to do layout for a few months after the transition. And I remember poring over every page—my name is on the masthead, you know—and just feeling super psyched and having this feeling that I’ve never had before.

Issue 94’s masthead — with Matt as publisher

M. That’s kind of the quick history. So I’ve been publisher since summer 2010; that’s seven years, fastest seven years of my life.

2012 we went up to twice monthly.

2013 we hired our first employees.

So that’s 12 years of everyone working on Little Village and doing it without any pay. Well, one of our rules from the beginning was that we always pay writers, we always pay photographers, and we always pay for content. But editors… Hmm. They get their name on page 3. “Features Editor” or “Contributing Editor.” I was psyched to be “Web Editor.”

A year into it, I remember getting this one check, a $300 check I totally didn’t expect, just because Andrew realized we were ahead for once and he was like “OK, we’re all getting $300 goddammit.”

But that was tight! It was like a taste in the water, you know? It was like “Alright, is there more of this? Can we do this again in 6 months?”