East City Bookshop welcomes Milo Todd to discuss his book, The Lilac People, in conversation with Stevie Billow.

Note on Format: This hybrid event will have both an in-person component with limited seating as well as a virtual broadcast via Zoom Webinar, which will be audio-only. Both in-person and virtual attendees will be able to pose questions to the author during audience Q&A.

ABOUT THE LILAC PEOPLE

For readers of All the Light We Cannot See and In Memoriam, a moving and deeply humane story about a trans man who must relinquish the freedoms of prewar Berlin to survive first the Nazis then the Allies while protecting the ones he loves

In 1932 Berlin, Bertie, a trans man, and his friends spend carefree nights at the Eldorado Club, the epicenter of Berlin’s thriving queer community. An employee of the renowned Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at the Institute of Sexual Science, Bertie works to improve queer rights in Germany and beyond, but everything changes when Hitler rises to power. The institute is raided, the Eldorado is shuttered, and queer people are rounded up. Bertie barely escapes with his girlfriend, Sofie, to a nearby farm. There they take on the identities of an elderly couple and live for more than a decade in isolation.

In the final days of the war, with their freedom in sight, Bertie and Sofie find a young trans man collapsed on their property, still dressed in Holocaust prison clothes. They vow to protect him—not from the Nazis, but from the Allied forces who are arresting queer prisoners while liberating the rest of the country. Ironically, as the Allies’ vise grip closes on Bertie and his family, their only salvation becomes fleeing to the United States.

Brimming with hope, resilience, and the enduring power of community, The Lilac People tells an extraordinary story inspired by real events and recovers an occluded moment of trans history.

Milo Todd is a Massachusetts Cultural Council grantee and a Lambda Literary Fellow. His work has appeared in Slice Magazine and elsewhere. He is co–editor in chief of Foglifter and teaches creative writing to queer and trans adults.

Stevie Billow is a writer and editor living in Washington DC. Their work has been supported by GrubStreet, Tin House, the Prospect Street Writers House, Shenandoah literary magazine, and the Key West Literary Seminar among others. Most recently, they have been awarded a research grant from the John and Helen Timo Foundation for their memoir-in-progress. By day, Stevie is a bookseller and dog photographer at East City Bookshop.