In 2021, Torrey Peters burst onto the literary scene with her debut novel, Detransition, Baby. Four years later, Peters returns with another riveting listen that interrogates gender, queerness, and binaries of every kind. Consisting of a novel and three supporting novellas, Stag Dance delivers four unique narratives (and performances) that all push listeners to sit with their discomfort and face unnerving situations, characters, and concepts head-on.
Michael Collina: What inspired the format of Stag Dance, which is written as a collection featuring one novel, surrounded by three novellas (“Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” “The Chaser,” and “The Masker”)?
Torrey Peters: One of the great things about writing your own book is that you get to tailor the form to what you think best serves the stories—instead of tailoring the stories to the best form that would serve a publication. Tailoring a story for a publication, is why, for instance, we see so many short stories of 3,000 to 5,000 words. That’s the best length for a magazine editor, but is it the ideal length for any given story? In my case, I wrote four pieces at unusual lengths and in different styles, and I found that together they resonate thematically and enrich each other. So the format came about by serving the stories first, rather than trying to fit the stories to a conventional form. We used to see this a lot, actually, in the past, when authors like Thomas Mann would publish books like Death in Venice and Other Tales. So I guess I’m bringing back this retro format because I think it just works!
What inspired your choice to focus on lumberjacks in the titular novel as opposed to any other historically masculine, male-dominated professions?
While I was writing this, I spent a lot of time in the woods of Vermont, building an off-grid sauna, so trees and firewood have featured prominently in my life—maybe too prominently—so I came by the logging interest honestly. But also: I think that many of the themes around gender that interest me are not unique to women, or even trans women. We just don’t often see gender played around with in traditionally male spaces. Yet, I found that when I started talking about gender and sexuality in the voice of my narrator, who speaks in an unexpected logger slang, rather than in the more customary language one usually uses to discuss gender, many of the questions came alive for me in new ways, that having it reframed that way made me see it anew, even as I was writing.
There’s a lot of fiction that explores transition and exploration through nature and wild life. Why do you think nature can offer so many insights into our own human experiences with our own gender identities?
Well, when I was building that sauna, I was reminded how much of the human experience is just sensations in a body. Heat, cold, desire, pain, the sensuality of smells and touch, and in some ways, those experiences are heightened in nature. You don’t get to control very much in the wild, you just experience it. And a lot of gender is about trying to control your body in front of other people, through dress and performance and etiquette and customs—yet so much of that gets stripped away in the woods. And when it's just you and some trees in the forest, how do you know what kind of woman you might be? What kind of man? What is even masculine or feminine when you are being yourself in front of a tree? Who is judging? Is the tree? In that way, you get to start fresh in your understanding.
What do you hope listeners take away from the stories in Stag Dance?
I think I’ve been really lucky to have four amazing actors perform Stag Dance in the audiobook, doing four totally distinct voices for each of the sections. I hope that listeners get to come away from this the same way that one might from a really incredible night of theater—that is, moved, entertained, and occasionally provoked. For me, this audiobook is less a reading than it is a performance, and I’m grateful to my collaborators in making it feel that way.
Are there any other trans creators or stories on Audible that inspire you, or you would like to recommend to your listeners?
There’s this new book Woodworking by Emily St. James that just launched. Emily wrote for the show Yellowjackets, and so I have to think that Emily just has an ear for the sound of language and dialogue, so for my part, I think I’m going to be listening to Woodworking, rather than reading it, and I’m super excited for that.
