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Stag Dance

Stag Dance

A Novel & Stories

About the Book

The kaleidoscopic follow-up to the bestselling Detransition, Baby

“Hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours

In this collection of one novel and three stories, Torrey Peters’s keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.

In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.

Three startling stories surround Stag Dance: “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In “The Chaser,” a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last story, “The Masker,” a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.

Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.
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Praise for Stag Dance

“Torrey Peters is often describing something that has never been described before and it’s never something minor, it’s something massive that has been missing from our understanding and enjoyment of the world. Stag Dance is hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours
 
“A spellbinding collection of genre-blurring novellas, set in worlds familiar and far-flung . . . With pathos and wit, Torrey Peters explores characters who find themselves on the brink of self-discovery while also grappling with the challenge and promise of community. I loved this book.”—Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half
 
“The stories in Stag Dance are potent and surprising and take no prisoners. How exquisitely Peters writes about the way we move toward ourselves—with the clarity of desire and the agony of resistance.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

“This is what I want from fiction. It starts at a place of real vulnerability, goes all the way down its own rabbit hole, and ends up potent and strange.”—Imogen Binnie, author of Nevada

“Peters is a holy, dreadful storyteller, her words divine and her characters brutally real, her talent awe-inspiring, her vision immense. Her writing tears your guts out. It leaves you gasping. This is fiction that makes you drop to your knees—fiction at its very best.”—Julia Phillips, bestselling author of Bear

“Stag Dance is a brilliant literary kaleidoscope. Peters shatters the familiar in four bold and imaginative tales, each powerful enough to reshape our understanding of transness and where we find it.”—Nicola Dinan, author of Bellies

“Electrifying. . . The funny yet heart-wrenching title novella, set sometime during the primacy of steam engines and written in the style of a tall tale, may be Peters’s best work yet. . . . Peters explores her characters’ conundrums with striking honesty, revealing how they’re bound by indecision and insecurities from finding happiness, and she exhibits spectacular flexibility with language and form. It’s a marvel.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
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About the Author

Torrey Peters
Torrey Peters is the bestselling author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and was named one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by The New York Times. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa and an MA in comparative literature from Dartmouth. Peters rides a pink motorcycle and splits her time between Brooklyn and an off-grid cabin in Vermont. More by Torrey Peters
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