Stag Dance author Torrey Peters on trans shame, horny lumberjacks, and literary freedom (EXCLUSIVE)
In association with Audible
By James Hodge
Torrey Peters is arguably the world’s most famous trans novelist of our time. After publishing the award-winning Detransition, Baby in 2021, now she returns with a curious collection of novellas entitled Stag Dance, a series of four narratives that capture the breadth of the trans experience – in a dystopian future, a teen high-school dormitory, the deep forests of Old Vermont, and on the Las Vegas strip.
Here, Attitude speaks to Peters about the struggles of trans writing, the pleasure of genre-bending, and living in America at a time of oppression. We also share our picks of our best recent reads, as well as our current favourite audiobook available on Audible.
What was it like to be catapulted into the mainstream and onto prize lists with Detransition, Baby?
It was surprising but strangely alienating. It was published during the pandemic, so my interactions were online — interviews, prize ceremonies… I remember winning the PEN/Hemingway Award and then realising my life was exactly the same. I went to the fridge, grabbed a snack and a glass of water, and life went on. There was no glamour to it. Equally, people’s responses to the novel — both positive and critical — only existed to me through the internet. But of course, it was exciting too. It was life-changing!
Did you have any preconceptions as a trans woman about how the world would respond to you?
I was part of a punk trans-writing scene in Brooklyn in 2014 that I think was a reaction to the way the world had treated trans writers. It was trans writers writing books for each other, publishing on small presses, self-publishing, precisely because people had seen how oftentimes misinterpreted trans books could be. When I was approached by Random House, I highlighted that I wanted to publish my book as a trans-iteration of domestic fiction — a woman in the city, just like Sex and the City, but do it as a trans novel. Don’t reinvent the wheel for me. And the weird thing was, they said yes! It was gratifying that what we had been doing in this small scene translated successfully to major publishers.
How do you follow up a blockbuster novel?
Well, nobody was asking for a novel about a large, ugly lumberjack trying to get a date for a dance. When I was writing stuff that was closer to Detransition, Baby, I really felt the weight of expectations. When I found Stag Dance, I actually found the freedom to write again.
Where did the inspiration for Stag Dance come from?
I was building a sauna in the woods in Vermont, and in the process learning about trees and chainsaws. I began wondering who the people were who logged here before. During my research, I found pictures of stag dances, where civil war soldiers, miners, railroad builders, loggers — in all-male spaces — would be dancing sexually with each other. They’d be away from cities, away from their loved ones, and they would be lonely and horny, and they would throw dances where some men would take on the role of women. There were queer relationships in these camps. Anyone who wanted to come to the dance as a female cut out a triangle of brown fabric, probably burlap, and hung it upside down from their crotch. It’s a crude symbol but I see it as a stripping back of the elaborate, baroque process of transitioning today into something rawer.
The novellas within Stag Dance feel like a patchwork of trans history, both past, present, and your imagined future as well.
To me, it was less about history than genre. I’ve always loved works like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas — my favourite book. It’s a mash-up of themes that resonate and collide — equally, the conventions of each genre rub against one another. [Of the stories in Stag Dance] ‘Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones’ is speculative; ‘The Chaser’ is a teen romance; ‘Stag Dance’ is the Americana tall tale, and ‘The Masker’ is horror.
Explain how you find the humanity within the breadth of these experiences.
I’m not interested in the male-female binary — I’m interested in the cis-trans binary. The emotional building blocks of being trans are ones we universally experience all of the time, presenting our bodies and gender to be validated by the world. I’m interested in the moments where we declare ourselves as something — the moments of shame, of trying to perform something, of failing to perform something: the desire to be seen a certain way and to be recognised as we want to be recognised. When I take what is a core experience of being trans and project it, I find it in all sorts of other characters.
Although you write about an oppressed minority, there is a greyness and moral ambiguity in how you present them. Why is that important to you?
I don’t find role models helpful, personally. If someone is thoroughly good, good for that person. Their contexts and obstacles are different to mine. There is far more relatability in the experience of fucking up. I love characters who are fucking up. They are human — they are living in a context of transphobia where trans people are meant to feel ashamed and scared. Their sexuality is weaponised against them. That repression is reflected in their mistakes and bad behaviours and questionable choices they make. Just because an individual has ideals doesn’t mean they always meet those ideals. And how could they within the bigger picture? I want readers to be liberated to both relate to my characters, and to recognise that often they are horrible. Readers should think ‘Wow, it’s terrible to live in this world of repression. Maybe I should make strong decisions that free myself.’
Name a trans writer that is important to you.
Imogen Binnie. She wrote Nevada, a trans novel written for trans women by someone who already understands the trans experience. It blew me away. I couldn’t have written Detransition, Baby without it.
A historical novel you really enjoyed?
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. She creates a terrific character but sets him within a broader context of history. It talks about the story of money, power, religion, monarchy, gender, while still developing a charismatic protagonist in Thomas Cromwell.
Tell me a speculative novel that challenged you.
A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James. It uses the structure of dystopia. Everything is well in the world, but then there’s the attempted assassination of Bob Marley — and society falls apart.
A text that shocks readers?
Tampa by Alissa Nutting. It’s like a reverse Lolita. It’s a deeply uncomfortable read. This may be heteronormative literature, but it doesn’t pull punches.
A book that makes you cry every time?
Independent People by Halldor Laxness. It’s also a book that makes me laugh. And it’s that combination — the funny with the tragic — that gets me off balance. I’m laughing and then the knife slides in. Tremendous.
Currently, life in America is volatile for trans people. What is your message to trans readers?
You don’t have to believe in this authority. You don’t owe them anything. They don’t have any legitimacy. If their entire reason to do something is cruelty or bigotry, then what they’re doing is illegitimate, and you’re allowed to break rules, you’re allowed to do what you have to do to feel right. This terrible government has truly singled you out, so we need to build something new where the old rules no longer apply.
Recommended Reads
What a Girl Wants by Roxy Bourdillon (out now in hardback)
Part memoir and part guide to queer life, this is the story of Roxy Bourdillon, the brilliant editor-in-chief of the iconic Diva magazine, as she navigates modern life. Beginning in her grandmother’s kitchen and climaxing with meeting the love of her life, Bourdillon hits the beats of every facet of life for women from across the sexual and gender spectrum — coming out, sex, Pride, body image, working life and much more. Reading Bourdillon’s prose is like having a late-night chat with a close friend; it’s full of gossip, wit, heartache and charm, and amid the laughter and tears, much wisdom can be found too.
The Gallopers by Jon Ransom (Out now in paperback)
This year’s Polari prize winner doesn’t disappoint: a coming-of-age novel that tells of Eli, a working-class queer man growing up in 1950s Norfolk, navigating his relationships with a factory worker and a stranger who runs the carousel at a visiting carnival. Ransom’s stylistics blister in the summer heat, exploring a young man’s challenges of growing up in a world where homosexuality is still illegal, and living under the cloud of the disappearance of his mother. This quiet, understated novel packs an absolute gut-punch, leaving you with a cast of unforgettable characters you will never forget.
Audiobook pick
Playground by Richard Powers
Powers has risen to fame for his thought-provoking eco-criticism with stories that explore the human relationship with nature and the environment. However, rather than through the persuasive medium of essays, in Playground he uses the narrative of a series of characters who each have a relationship with the ocean, including a Pacific islander, a deep-sea explorer, and an AI tech designer. Each person’s moving story is intertwined with their common love of or need for the sea.
It is Powers’ electric description of the big blue and his ability to revitalise and bring to life one of the greatest wonders of the natural world that make this such an immersive read, producing a text that you want to dive deeply into and lose yourself in. And with a low-key subplot about a closeted lesbian character, it may appeal all the more to queer readers.
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