Stag Dance

Praise

“A great Torrey Peters story feels like punching yourself in the face, laughing at the bleeding bitch in the mirror and then shamefacedly realizing you’re aroused by the blood on your lips. The four pieces in Stag Dance will leave you bruised, broken and wanting more.”—The New York Times

“Torrey Peters moves nimbly between scenes of a hormone-affecting pandemic and a logging camp plagued by a mysterious beast, with vivid characters ever exploring gender and connection.”—Vanity Fair

“From one of the boldest, most innovative voices in fiction today. . . [What unites this collection] is Torrey Peters’ masterful and unflinching depiction of desire.”—Bustle

“Sincere and mind-bending . . . [Stag Dance] is more exciting than anything else around.”—New York

“[Stag Dance perfectly showcases Peters’s] acid wit, incredible talent, and eye for possibility.”—Chicago Review of Books

“A collection that pulses with fever-dream intensity. . . . Dreamlike and unsettling, knife-edged and macabrely witty, Stag Dance demands to be discussed.”—Womendotcom

“Stag Dance further establishes [Peters] as an essential voice in queer literature.”—AV Club

“Inventive, boundary-pushing . . . [Stag Dance takes] on gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory.”—People

“Innovative, insightful, funny, and confronting.”—The Independent

“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

“Brilliant, mind-blowing . . . Peters’ vision is one where gender roles are never stagnant, and the world is made new by queerness.”—BookPage

“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.”—Publishers Weekly, starred revie