When Detransition, Baby hit the shelves in 2021, its success took readers on both sides of the Atlantic by surprise. Longlisted for the Women’s prize and selected as one of the New York Times 100 best books of the 21st century, Torrey Peters’s debut novel was among the titles that defined the literary landscape of the Covid-19 pandemic. Finding herself in the crosshairs of a mounting culture war, Peters became one of the world’s best known trans writers, seemingly overnight.
Of course, this isn’t the full picture. Before her international breakthrough, Peters had self-published two novellas, The Masker and Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, shifting enough copies for mainstream publishers to take an interest. Both appear in Stag Dance, along with two pieces written either side of Detransition, Baby: the title story and The Chaser. They make up an ambitious compendium of a decade in writing.
