Milo Todd Brooklyn Book Event - The Lilac People

Hive Mind Books is pleased to welcome author Milo Todd to speak about and sign his new novel, a riveting work of trans historical fiction, The Lilac People. Todd will appear in conversation with fellow author Griffin Hansbury.

This event is free to attend. Please RSVP!

Book Tickets, suggested donation tickets, and free tickets are all available. RSVP to see all options.

Masks are strongly encouraged at all Hive Mind Books events.

Books will be available for purchase at Hive Mind Books the night of the event. We ask that all books signed at Hive Mind Books events be purchased from Hive Mind Books. If you already have the book(s) and would like to get them signed, we ask that you buy something else at the store while here, if it’s within your means. Thank you for supporting an independent queer bookstore!

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 Pr*son 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.

Griffin Hansbury is the author of Some Strange Music Draws Me In, a novel, along with Feral City (a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction), and Vanishing New York (both written as Jeremiah Moss), as well as The Nostalgist and Day for Night, a collection of poems. His celebrated blog Vanishing New York (2007 – 2021) was frequently named a Best of New York by The Village Voice.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Hive Mind Books, 219 Irving Avenue, Brooklyn, United States