Evie Caperton

Evie Caperton ‘25, known by many for her flamboyance, hijinks, good humor and platform crocs, is embarking on a quest for further adventures post graduation, leaving many good memories and a strong legacy in her wake. 

A gender, women’s and sexuality studies major and American studies concentrator, Caperton came to Grinnell masked up, part of the first new class on campus since the start of the COVID pandemic. 

“[Coming to college] it felt like a lot of the Grinnell culture, the liveliness that we had come to expect from the admissions process was missing,” Caperton said. 

Caperton remembers a scarcity of campus organizations allowed to operate, students, faculty and staff masking and practicing social distancing, and countless Dining Hall to-go boxes as students were forced to eat in lounges or outside.

“Our first year was really disorganized,” Caperton said. “Being a fourth year now, one thing I’m really proud of with my class is that we’ve all taken great care to invest in the things, the organizations, the events that we care about.”

Caperton invested time in bringing back the campus culture Grinnellians know and love through her involvement in Neverland Players, Queer People of Color (QPOC) drag shows and Ultimate Frisbee, to name a few. Caperton joined the Neverland Players her first year and has brought to life iconic elementary-student-authored stories such as “Chicken Tiger,” “Minecraft: The Adventures of Alex and Steve” and “Dinosaur the Epic,” to the stage. 

“Neverland is a space of just pure, childlike joy. You go in for two-hour rehearsals and all that it is is reading funny stories and letting yourself be childlike, goofy and to just like, laugh, laugh, laugh,” Caperton said. 

Caperton’s flare for performance led her to the Harris stage multiple times during her senior year. Her series of performances began when she won the Drag Bingo lip-sync battle where she was scouted to participate in the fall QPOC drag show as the devil, lip-synching to Bruno Mars’ “Locked Out of Heaven.” In the spring, Caperton embodied lesbian Elphaba in the Titular Head Wicked parody.

“I don’t know if doing the ‘Defying Gravity’ battle cry while painted green in front of my peers as the first ever simultaneous female orgasm is crazy or not,” Caperton said. “To me it felt a little crazy, but it was so much fun.”

A week later Caperton appeared as the Lorax, speaking for the trees through Kesha’s “Timber” in the spring QPOC drag show. 

“Paint yourself once, why not paint yourself again?” Caperton said. 

Off stage, Caperton explores her queer identity through their academic pursuits, including their  American studies capstone project titled “My Love Letter to Queer Appalachia.” The project examines the exploitative nature of corporate pride campaigns and Appalachia’s history with ecologically and economically exploitative industries while wrestling with the need for representation that such campaigns fill. 

“Growing up and in high school my hometown was not the best place to be queer. All that I wanted was to be able to find books about this stuff, find books that spoke to not just being queer, but to being queer in a small town in the middle of the mountains,” Caperton said. 

In the wake of rollbacks to diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Caperton started the Little Free Library of Queer Appalachia Project to help bolster queer representation and queer positive education. Caperton’s Free Little Library project is an open-source digital platform that catalogues a range of media, from books to zines and podcasts, for and about queer people in Appalachia. 

“The Little Free Library Project, and my capstone as a whole, speak to that desire that I had for access to information, to access stories that were about people like me,” Caperton said.

Outside of theater and academics, Caperton was a member of Team Renfrow, worked at Burling library, volunteered for the middle school art club and so much more. Caperton said that at the heart of all of their engagement with others on and off campus is the power of mentorship.

“Groups and things I’ve been a part of, I’ve had these awesome mentor figures who are all first and foremost very energetic and very kind,” Caperton said.

Reflecting on what she wants to be remembered for, Caperton said, “I’ve done a lot of crazy things: I’ve been painted orange and green in front of the whole student body. I got my head shaved at an improv show… But I just kind of hope to be remembered as somebody who was kind and fun and funny and always willing to talk to people.” 

Of her overall time at Grinnell, Caperton said, “It takes a while to find your footing here. I found my footing because of other people who are really fun and kind to me. That’s something I think is best to pay forward, and I hope that somehow I’ve done that.”