Finding Joy, Building Belonging: Granite Falls Pride 2026
Written by Shy Miguel, Granite Falls Pride Coordinator & The YES! House Program Assistant | Photos by Thomas Flynn
Playfulness. Silliness. Joy as resistance. Education. Safety. Celebration.
When the Granite Falls Pride committee gathered for the first time in February 2026, I opened by asking “what should Pride feel like in our community? What impact do we want to leave?”
We all took a few minutes to write as many words down that we could on sticky notes, stuck them all up on the wall, and came back together to find what the most common themes were. These would be the words that would ground us in planning our second annual Granite Falls Pride celebration.
We found playfulness and silliness in a queer trivia game and in an immersive blacklight painting experience (stop by TYH to check out the masterpieces!). We found joy as resistance by laughing, singing, and dancing to some stellar karaoke performances in the midst of a sensationalized attempt to cause more division in our communities. We found education in our resource tables and the queer media display curated by the Granite Falls Public Library. We found safety in providing space in our community with LGBTQ2IA+ representation, including Granite Falls’ first drag performance by Fuego Inferno. And we found celebration in all the in-between spaces; in the parents cheering on their kids performing karaoke for the first time, in the excitement of folks seeing their flag represented and displayed, in the connections created that will continue carrying us through outside of our Pride celebrations.
A special thank you to our vendors: Eagle Ocean with linocut printing, Granite Falls Public Library queer media display, The Lemon Ladies with fresh squeezed lemonade, and Fresh & Tasty food cart with hotdogs.
Thank you to the Granite Falls Pride Crew, volunteers, and all the folks who donated their time, their skills, drinks or snacks, financial support, or even just getting the word out there to support us!
To our friends at Willmar Pride & Marshall Pride: thank you for sharing your communities with us, your resources, your knowledge, and for making the drive here to celebrate with us!
And to our LGBTQ2IA+ community in the surrounding Granite Falls area: know that you are seen and you are valued beyond measure. Know that there are safe places and safe people here. Know that your family, whatever that might look like, deserves to be celebrated loudly and proudly. Know that Granite Falls is as much your community as anyone else’s– you are wanted here, you are essential to making our community as vibrant as it can be, and you belong here. Always.
