At Iowa House, queer Utahns find a place to be themselves over Sunday dinner

When Amanda Madden moved back to Salt Lake City at the height of the pandemic after living 11 years in New York, they never intended to stay. That all changed when a simple, profound idea popped into their head.

“I’m just going to see if queer people will come to my house!” Madden, who is nonbinary, said with a giggle, “I’m going to try Sunday dinners!”

Together with their partner Jade Swayne, they took their dinner offer to Instagram, calling the Sunday dinner a “queer home experiment.” Madden and Swayne didn’t expect anything to really come of it.

To their pleasant surprise, the exact opposite happened. Queer and transgender people accepted the offer to join them at their home, known as Iowa House.

In Utah, where Sunday dinner is ingrained into the culture, no other day seemed as appropriate to Madden and Swayne. Sunday dinner was something they felt they could reframe for a queer community that may have negative associations with the practice. They wanted to fill their home with queer joy.

“It’s about nourishment. Both physically and emotionally,” Madden said. “We’re here for each other’s basic needs and resources. That’s a huge part of a queer home.”

Nine months after launching the dinners, the backyard is usually packed every Sunday evening with queer and trans people sharing a meal at a long picnic table. The dinner gained enough attention that they had to cap the number of people who could attend at 30 — and there’s a waiting list.

“I feel like that just so speaks to how big this [queer] community is,” Madden said, “and how much we are seeking to find another.”

The home’s architecture and style already exude a welcoming feeling from the outside. But walking inside compounds that feeling. Madden knew it, too. They say the home was made to bring people together.

Symbolic art, like still portraits of the forgotten feminist icon Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, lines the stair wall. A retro-looking kitchen table perfectly parallels an antique piano directly across from a record player. Natural light, even on a gloomy day, shines through the living room’s big bay windows. There isn’t a sad house plant in sight.

However, nothing outshines the chosen family that gathers at Iowa House for Sunday dinner.

“There’s no place like this anywhere,” Mink Montgomery, an Iowa House attendee, said.

Iowa House is an emblem, Madden said, that tells people “you’re not alone on this journey. You have a whole community behind you to fend off the loneliness and validate your queer exploration.”

Finding queer community in Utah

Ask the roughly dozen queer people who showed up for Sunday dinner on Mother’s Day to describe Iowa House, and a few words pop up.

Family. Community. Freedom. Home. Growth. Future. Roots.

It was a smaller group than normal for the potluck dinner — but the energy is the same whether it’s 12 or 30 people who show up.

Even the introductions of new people are organic. People are mingling and bonding with their queer peers. Everyone wears a name tag, with their pronouns listed. Conversations of all kinds drown out the background music. The home is constantly filled with laughter and intrigue. There’s rarely a moment of silence. It’s apparent everyone cares deeply for each other.

The fluidity of the gathering is intentional, Madden and Swayne said. They wanted to build a community that centered queer and trans people while facilitating a space where, both say, people could feel free to “come as you are.”

“We’ve seen names change. We’ve seen pronouns change,” Swayne said. “It’s about trying to create a space and have a group of people that accepts people however they show up in that moment.”

Growing up, Madden never thought it would be possible to have a close-knit queer group in Utah. They weren’t fully out as a queer nonbinary person until they moved to New York. Iowa House, on the other hand, gave them a chance to foster a new relationship with not only queer people but with Utah itself.

“Now I feel like I have this vast queer community here that is so strong and supportive,” Madden said giddily. “It gives me butterflies to think about my kid self somehow imagining that possibility.”

Swayne, who is Black and nonbinary, agrees with Madden. Teetering back and forth between Utah and Arizona growing up, Swayne was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for more than a decade. It wasn’t until their final two years in the church that Swayne decided to be openly queer.

Being queer and churchgoing, Swayne said, “there was always this overhanging dread around my identity that made me feel some kind of way.” Since leaving the church, Swayne said, Iowa House has provided them the support they needed to fully embrace themselves.

“I did not expect that I would feel so sustained by this community,” Swayne said. “It’s like a moment to just be together and recharge.”

Intersectionality and queerness

Jamera Ewing put all the states she’s never been to into a hat. By the luck of the draw, she pulled Utah. Next thing she knew, her bags were packed and she was leaving the Midwest for the desert West.

Ewing is Black, and she immediately noticed how white Utah is. She was worried she wouldn’t find her people in Utah. She was even slightly skeptical of Iowa House.

“Just because it’s safe for queer people,” she said, “doesn’t mean it’s safe for Black people.”

Ewing exhaled a sigh of relief when she walked through the Iowa House doors and spotted Swayne. They connected right off the bat and have developed a strong friendship, supporting one another’s poetry and other art forms.

For Ewing, Iowa House, its intersectional representation and comradery for community, helped solidify her desire to stay in Utah — for now.

Ewing’s experience is exactly what Madden and Swayne set out to accomplish. They wanted to cultivate a space where queer people of color felt safe, uplifted and noticed. For Swayne, the creation of Iowa House and the community its built has allotted them the ability to relax as well.

“To feel like this family is safe for so many parts of myself, that level of security is absolutely transformative,” Swayne said. “It makes me feel safer in this state as me. And that’s not just my queer identity, it’s my Black identity as well.”

Mother’s Day was Cydney Caradonna’s second time attending Iowa House with her partner, Mirna Ibarra.

“This has been the first queer space that has made us want to come back,” Caradonna said, gesturing to Ibarra. “It’s three hours of my week where I can be my authentic self.”

The first time, she wasn’t sure what to bring to the potluck. She opted to bring ingredients to make Micheladas, a tomato-and-beer beverage popular in Mexico. Being Latinx, queer and leaving a diverse area in California for Utah, Caradonna wasn’t sure how the crowd would respond to the drink.

“Everyone wanted to learn how to make the drink, and that really meant a lot to me,” she said. “It reminded me of back home, where we all partake in something that represents our culture together.”

Now, Caradonna says she just feels liberated walking into Iowa House. It’s a feeling Caradonna said can be hard to find in other proclaimed queer spaces.

“If you add another marginalized identity, it can become unsafe,” she said. “People in Utah need this, especially queer people of color.”

Beyond the walls of Iowa House

Despite being a self-described extrovert, Sammy Walker was nervous the first time they waltzed into Iowa House for Sunday dinner. They questioned if they were “queer enough” to join the party.

When Walker left Iowa House that night, they recalled, one thought raced through their mind: “‘What the hell? That was amazing.’ I didn’t know this was something I was missing.”

Among their many favorite things about Iowa House, Walker said comfort tops the list. They’ve noticed the transformations Iowa House inspired in their life.

“I can show up with a completely different name or gender and no one cares and they honor that,” Walker said, pointing to their Panic! At The Disco t-shirt and snapback hat.

Iowa House was the first place Walker ever used they/them pronouns or toyed with their gender presentation. Iowa House gave them the confidence to present themselves how they felt inside in other places. They publicly go by they/them now.

Walker says they also discovered something beyond their queer identity. “I have a queer family,” they said, “and I never thought that would happen.”

Conrad Volle stood in the dining room area of Iowa House wearing a flapper-style blouse. It’s attire Volle feels confident in.

Since attending Iowa House regularly, Volle said they’ve begun experimenting with their gender identity. They like the neutrality of they/them pronouns, and Iowa House is a place where they can express that without feeling questioned about it.

A few weeks earlier, Volle made their drag debut in the Iowa House living room. Their chosen family cheering them on, and Volle felt the moment was bigger than them.

Volle patted the sparkly beads on their blouse, and said, “Iowa House gives me the freedom to be who I want to be.”

A forever experiment

Madden and Swayne call Iowa House an experiment — which Swayne said grants them the freedom to constantly “keep that hand on the pulse,” altering the space to accommodate the community’s changing needs.

The goal isn’t growth, in the traditional sense, says Madden and Swayne. Rather, it’s for queer and trans folks to deepen their connection with one another and themselves. So far, in their eyes, Iowa House has succeeded.

“I feel like we’ve planted this little seed that is sprouting at the pace of trees,” Madden said. “It will grow over time, making it feel like anything is possible.”

What sets Iowa House apart from conventional queer inviting places, like LGBTQ bars, is Madden and Swayne’s dedication to its community members, asking them what they would like to see the house become — and then making that happen.

For their introverted friends, sometimes a puzzle sits on the kitchen table as an escape from the chatter. Some wanted live music during Sunday dinner, so Madden and Swayne busted out the tool box and made a makeshift stage in the backyard. Once, a house regular wanted to teach a ballet class in the living room — so they cleared out the furniture to make room for pirouettes.

“There is not enough room in this house to do ballet,” Madden said, laughing. “We were all flying into each other and the wall.”

The dancer was able to find a permanent space to host ballet outside Iowa House, and some house guests have infiltrated the studio for queer ballet lessons.

The connections made at Iowa House have turned into book clubs, friendships and even romances — all sparked from the idea to welcome other queer and trans people in Utah into a home.

On Sundays, there’s a special seat at the picnic table for the queer and trans people who came before them who didn’t have the chance to proudly be their true self, Madden said.

“I think of all the queer magic lineage behind us,” Madden said. “I think of a family member that was probably gay and never got the chance to come out.”

Madden and Swayne say they don’t want to limit the spirit of Iowa House, but to make it flourish. Iowa House is for anybody on the rainbow. No one is gatekeeping the concept, and it can be adapted and formatted anywhere — from Provo to Phoenix.

“The queer future we imagine,” Madden said, “has a place for everyone.”