Des Moines Pride Center

The Des Moines Pride Center serves, supports and celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community and its allies through queer literature, local history and a welcoming space to gather. Its home in the Mickle Center, in the historic Sherman Hill neighborhood, holds the largest queer-only library in Iowa: thousands of memoirs, novels, documentaries, educational texts and periodicals, every one donated by the community. The Rick Miller Library is open Sundays from 2 to 5 p.m. for browsing, borrowing and spending an afternoon in the reading room, inside a secured, locked-entry building.

The Center also protects Iowa's LGBTQIA+ history. Its Historical Archives, historical exhibit and digital archive of Iowa queer history preserve photographs, documents, organizational records and memorabilia, and serve as a research hub for students, historians, authors and activists. Archive pop-ups take that history on the road, including the Queer through the Years series on the Drake University campus. The event calendar adds Queer Trivia Night for LGBTQ+ History Month and the Queer Art Now! Gallery showcasing queer artists, and a regular newsletter rounds up LGBTQ events around Des Moines.

Founded in 1985 as the Gay Lesbian Resource Center, the first LGBTQIA+ nonprofit in the Des Moines metro, the Center began as a resource for queer youth and has kept its focus on learning and community. Visitors can drop off books, films and magazines during Sunday hours, offer archival materials by phone, register as volunteers, or give online. Materials that don't fit the collection go to a community book sale that supports operations.