From Mount Pleasant’s James Van Allen (“Father of Space Science”) to Beaconsfield’s Peggy Whitson (who holds the U.S. endurance record for most cumulative time in space at 695 days) to the July 2025 TRACERS mission to study space weather, developed and tested at the University of Iowa, our state has had a long and fruitful […]
LGBTQ history
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Queer history, pop culture and computers helped Iowa artist Ben Millett cover a gallery in quilts
Ben Millett’s quilts are tactile records, coded with color, memory and meaning. They look soft because they are, but their softness doesn’t dull their message. Instead, it amplifies it. On July 26, 2025, the Des Moines Art Center will open its first-ever quilt-based solo exhibition, “Iowa Artists 2025: Ben Millett,” a showcase of about 20 […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Fully Booked at DMPL: Read to resist LGBTQ+ erasure
Legislators in the state of Iowa are actively trying to erase the stories of LGBTQ+ people by removing books from public schools and denying access to important, life-saving stories for youth. People that try to ban books know that books are powerful and are a danger to their hegemonic systems and strict societal norms, which […]
Posted inCommunity/News
‘It was necessary to become activists’: LGBTQ-affirming Iowa religious groups find church in quiet rooms, loud rallies
Sunday services of the Ames Friends Meeting are held at their meetinghouse on S Maple Avenue, marked by a sign in the front yard declaring “All are welcome.” I visited on a sunny spring morning. Beams of sunlight seemed to make the houseplants against the walls glow. Occasional birdsong seeped through a barely open window. […]
Posted inCommunity/News
What’s the point of Pride? Trans/genderfluid Iowans discuss persistence, fear and how to spite the bigots in power
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, 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 […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: 100 years ago, central Iowans embraced gender-nonconforming immigrant and fortune teller Heroda Kaiji
Heroda Kaiji, when he sensed that he was dying, asked his friends to take him from his rooming house apartment in Stuart to a shady hill beside the South Raccoon River near Dexter. He wanted to spend his final moments looking out across Dexfield Park, the amusement park where he had performed as a palmist […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: ‘The Laramie Project’ is a legitimately brave production from the Des Moines Young Artists’ Theatre
By the time you read this, the Des Moines Young Artists’ Theatre’s (DMYAT) production of The Laramie Project at Stoner Theater will have come and gone. While this remains a review of the company’s latest production, consider this, additionally, an assessment of this youth-centered central Iowa program. DMYAT is a Des Moines nonprofit dedicated to […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa becomes the first state to erase parts of its Civil Rights Act
Iowa has now made history as the first state to erase parts of its civil rights code to strip protections from some of its citizens. Despite the enormity of cutting gender identity out of the Iowa Civil Rights Act — thereby eliminating rights of transgender and nonbinary Iowans that have been in place for 18 […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Peak Iowa: Arthur Russell, Oskaloosa’s lost genius
Tape hung like curtains in Arthur Russell’s apartment. The recording devices responsible were powered by an extension cord that ran out the window and down a few floors to Allen Ginsberg’s. Russell left behind 166 feet of tape when he died, only 40 years old, of AIDS-related illness in 1992. And if you’ll let me […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Plain Spoken: Revisiting ‘Iowa,’ Patrick Moore’s neglected gay novel
This monthly column will explore the long and diverse history of literature’s Midwestern engagements. There is an established canon of American literature in which the Midwest plays heavily, as a both physical and social place.
Posted inCommunity/News
After years defying United Methodist rules as an openly queer chaplain, Iowa City’s Anna Blaedel is out of the church and proud to be a ‘spiritual misfit’
Rev. Anna Blaedel is a chaplain, public theologian, writer and a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Religious Studies program. They earned a Masters in Divinity at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, and have been chaplaining students on the UI campus since 2014. Affiliated with the United Methodist Church (UMC) for 109 […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence have entertained, aided and provoked for 45 years. Their habits began in Iowa.
In 2014, while the marriage equality movement worked to prove just how normal and nuclear LGBTQ families could be, Des Moines-born musician Perfume Genius released “Queen,” its lyrics glamorizing age-old stereotypes of queer men: “cracked, peeling,” “wrapped in golden leaves,” “riddled with disease” and, triumphantly, “No family is safe when I sashay.” The song quickly […]
