Origin stories are mirrors; we see ourselves in sagas. For trans folks, those ancestral tales are often erased, bowdlerized; many forever lost.
But in The Intermediaries, Brandy Schillace takes us to 1920s Berlin at Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexuality, the world’s first trans clinic, and creates a definitive historical record of a vibrantly trans society intersecting with science.
Simultaneously an adventure tale and an academic romp, her detailed, accessible portraiture is impeccably drawn from literal fragments—the Institute was the main target of the first Nazi book burnings.
Schillace also finds common ancestors our community deserves. Our heroine is Dora Richter, the first trans woman to have modern gender-affirming surgery at the Institute—who, incredibly, survived the Nazi regime. Her story gives new shape to our trans family tree, a great-great grandmother to stand alongside Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera.
Schillace also challenges the paradigm of the historical trans narrative, setting new language standards that reflect the time period and its still-relevant science while respecting the subjects’ identities within our current lexicon.
She’s fantastic, quirky, a cool nerd, and a survivor who doesn’t take shortcuts. Meet Brandy Schillace.
Tell us about your practice.
It varies. For fiction, I write with a fountain pen in a notebook each evening, telling myself the story I’ll write tomorrow. The next day I’ll type around 2,500 words from that skeleton. Research writing is quite different—but I still write my chapter outlines in pen, then finish on the laptop. I write and research simultaneously, books all around my computer and the floor, PDFs on additional screens. I call it descending into the book-well.
I speed up as I go; by project’s end I might crank out 4,000 words at a time, forgetting to eat, sleep, and pee.
The Intermediaries emerged from your 2021 Scientific American article on Hirschfeld. How did this topic find you; how did it coalesce into a book?
I was in a moment of self-discovery, beginning to see myself outside of gender binaries; I’d just come to terms with my autism, writing about how it overlapped with my gender…then I read Trans Like Me by CN Lester and decided to write about the Institute.
The article stirred controversy on old Twitter, with attacks from Rowling and MTG stans; SciAm had their share of hate too. But editor Laura Helmuth encouraged me, saying she would read a book about it.
It never could have come together except for a spare mention of Dora Richter—and the hint that an interview existed deep in a Berlin archive. Her story held everything else together.
You fought and survived breast cancer during writing. What happened? How did you get through?
As I neared the finish line, I noted a curious lump in my breast. I had mammograms, but as I have dense tissue, my results were couched in “You’re probably fine” language. Women must advocate for their health, so I requested additional imaging—but was told to wait six months because my insurance might not cover it. I called BS and had an ultrasound.
The tumor was small but aggressive. I requested a double mastectomy and was denied; the surgeon talked me into a lumpectomy. On my birthday, the surgeon called to admit it was a mistake. I needed to return for a mastectomy; I demanded a double, without reconstruction. I also had chemotherapy.
My writing came to a halt. It’s exhausting to be ill and navigate a medical system that doesn’t treat women or LGBTQIA+ people with respect. Luckily, we were in edits by then; it didn’t change the timeline.
I recently gave a keynote mentioning my cancer in the context of the book; I told the crowd that Dora’s story–and ours, and mine–were ones of hope and the unexpected. We fight a lot of cancers; we win by choosing to experience joy, by lifting each other up.
Your work intersects science, research, and storytelling. I’m curious how you developed your style; you turn history into adventure books.
I wrote fiction first, which isn’t always lucrative, so I sought a Ph.D. and taught literature, history, and creative writing. I was fascinated by cross-cultural exchange; I left my tenure track to work in a museum of medical technology. It wasn’t long before the grand arc of my interests took on a more specific shape: a storyteller who turns research into narrative. I invite you to live with the characters, breathe their air.
You have a brilliant ability to make the dead speak, to recreate thoughts, experiences, voices. What’s it like to breathe life into these bones? What ethics guide you?
It’s hard! I’m an academic researcher at my core, so I must stick to the sources. I want you to hear their voices. Dora’s Institute intake interview was essential; her words are really hers. But I also did wild lateral research in Berlin—even investigations of weather. Was it raining? How does the light look in June? What do the roses smell like in the Tiergarten?
I eschew putting words in the mouths of others without receipts. The book has a vast bibliography, character bios, glossary, timeline—I want you to know that in breathing life into the characters, it retains veracity.
Did you see yourself in these stories?
I wanted to be a camera lens, so that everyone who read it could see themselves in the work. I wanted to keep my shadow from obscuring any corner. Yet I do see myself in it—in bits of each character, from scientists to patients—a composite of experience.
What was most amazing about writing this?
That Dora lived to old age astounds and lifts me. But this was a difficult book to write—how to weave the history of science and politics, individuals and nations, into a single story that never loses momentum? How to recreate the urgency and dread, but still share the hopes and dreams? There was a needle I had to thread to make it work.
But I’m most amazed that someone wrote this book—and that the “someone” was me.
