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Stag Dance
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. 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.
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. 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.
10 pages, Audiobook
First published March 11, 2025
1187 people are currently reading
42322 people want to read
About the author
Torrey Peters
10 books1,851 followersTorrey Peters is the author of the novel Detransition, Baby, published by One World/Random House, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She is also the authors of the novellas Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth. Torrey rides a pink motorcycle and splits her time between Brooklyn and an off-grid cabin in Vermont.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,196 reviews
November 11, 2025
welcome to sophomore novel watch
(when you really liked an author's debut and you're nervously anticipating their next book)
(or in this case, three stories and one novel)
and the problem with having a collection that is three stories and one novel is that it really invites you to notice if the novel is not the strongest of the group.
i thought the first and last stories in this book were fantastic, and covered a lot of topics we tend to not grant nuance in extremely layered ways.
the two middle stories, which include the long title one, not as much.
and unfortunately, none of it blew me away like detransition, baby.
bottom line: good! but we've seen great.
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
(when you really liked an author's debut and you're nervously anticipating their next book)
(or in this case, three stories and one novel)
and the problem with having a collection that is three stories and one novel is that it really invites you to notice if the novel is not the strongest of the group.
i thought the first and last stories in this book were fantastic, and covered a lot of topics we tend to not grant nuance in extremely layered ways.
the two middle stories, which include the long title one, not as much.
and unfortunately, none of it blew me away like detransition, baby.
bottom line: good! but we've seen great.
(3.5 / thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
Want to read
August 14, 2024i'm seated. the indie booksellers are scared and asking me to leave because it’s ‘not march yet’ but i’m simply too seated
March 11, 2025
Stag Dance is on sale today! Run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore, because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this book for months—it’s that good. I honestly love everything about it.
I love how the four stories really and truly feel like they belong together, each story casting new light on the stories before and after, even though they’re all so different. I love how fucked up and real and ridiculous these stories are—all four of them—how lovely, romantic, perverse, generous, absurd. I love how it starts in the future and ends in a swiftly-receding present, but spends most of its time snowbound at an illegal logging camp, in an ambiguous, near mythic past. It made me want to read lumberjack novels all winter. It made me want to write a lumberjack novel of my own. It made me want to pin a brown triangle to my pants and show up to work drunk and wander out the back door into the woods with a blinking lantern and chop wood in a pioneer dress and dance.
I’ve been listening—like the rest of the world, I take it—to “Good Luck, Babe!” You'd have to stop the world just to stop the feeling. I’m the kind of queer person who is either blindingly visible or comfortably invisible. My choice. How simple, for me, to navigate the world as who I’m not. But navigate the world as who you’re not—is that not then a considerable part of who you are? Selves multiply indiscriminately. Logic demands that we cannot be what we aren’t. Is the illusion of falseness just another bitter artifact of capitalist self-fashioning? Or am I asking the wrong questions? Generally, temperamentally, I have little desire to draw attention to myself. But you’d have to stop the world… Spend too much time vanishing and your whole life starts to go gray around the edges. Or put it plainly, why not? Spend too much time as a man... something I am and am not, like Schrödinger's cat (look in the box—it’s a gender reveal party!)
Our bodies, our desires. These soft fleshy vessels—I’m tempted to say that we inhabit them, but that is just Christianity speaking through me, no? A soul—divine spark in flawed earthly vessel. Even as we muster our forces for a full frontal attack on binary gender, this other binary is in our sights: soul and body, mind and flesh, spirit and dust. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. I call bullshit.
None of it makes sense, because we don’t choose anything and somehow we choose everything. Because our bodies and our desires aren’t ours, not really—they’re something we do with other people, something we make and something we’re given and a series of stupid frustrating questions without answers that only make sense on Tuesday mornings and Friday nights and crack up into our own homegrown youtube oblivion the moment we try—fools that we are—to consider them dispassionately.
And so what choice do we have? We turn to stories. These four are some of the best.
I love how the four stories really and truly feel like they belong together, each story casting new light on the stories before and after, even though they’re all so different. I love how fucked up and real and ridiculous these stories are—all four of them—how lovely, romantic, perverse, generous, absurd. I love how it starts in the future and ends in a swiftly-receding present, but spends most of its time snowbound at an illegal logging camp, in an ambiguous, near mythic past. It made me want to read lumberjack novels all winter. It made me want to write a lumberjack novel of my own. It made me want to pin a brown triangle to my pants and show up to work drunk and wander out the back door into the woods with a blinking lantern and chop wood in a pioneer dress and dance.
I’ve been listening—like the rest of the world, I take it—to “Good Luck, Babe!” You'd have to stop the world just to stop the feeling. I’m the kind of queer person who is either blindingly visible or comfortably invisible. My choice. How simple, for me, to navigate the world as who I’m not. But navigate the world as who you’re not—is that not then a considerable part of who you are? Selves multiply indiscriminately. Logic demands that we cannot be what we aren’t. Is the illusion of falseness just another bitter artifact of capitalist self-fashioning? Or am I asking the wrong questions? Generally, temperamentally, I have little desire to draw attention to myself. But you’d have to stop the world… Spend too much time vanishing and your whole life starts to go gray around the edges. Or put it plainly, why not? Spend too much time as a man... something I am and am not, like Schrödinger's cat (look in the box—it’s a gender reveal party!)
Our bodies, our desires. These soft fleshy vessels—I’m tempted to say that we inhabit them, but that is just Christianity speaking through me, no? A soul—divine spark in flawed earthly vessel. Even as we muster our forces for a full frontal attack on binary gender, this other binary is in our sights: soul and body, mind and flesh, spirit and dust. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. I call bullshit.
None of it makes sense, because we don’t choose anything and somehow we choose everything. Because our bodies and our desires aren’t ours, not really—they’re something we do with other people, something we make and something we’re given and a series of stupid frustrating questions without answers that only make sense on Tuesday mornings and Friday nights and crack up into our own homegrown youtube oblivion the moment we try—fools that we are—to consider them dispassionately.
And so what choice do we have? We turn to stories. These four are some of the best.
June 5, 2025
Torrey Peters continues to entertain, enlighten and fascinate with this collection of three novellas and a short novel, all about the trans experience:
“Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones"
The narrator, a beautiful upper-class trans woman, is infected with a contagious virus that prevents those afflicted from producing male or female hormones - the raging pandemic has led to a war over the access to artificial hormones in the US. The nameless protagonist was patient zero because her friend Lexi, a trans activist with a precarious background, injected her with lab materials against her will, the altercation being prompted by the pair's inability to show solidarity and love due to trauma (again and again, the text refers to actual and metaphorical scars). So packaged in a dystopian civil war thriller in which everybody is forced to fight for their hormones/gender, the text is a meditation on how the trans community is affected by an outside pressure that has the potential to unravel whole nations if they had to contend with these problems on a larger scale. This could easily become a novel or a netflix series.
Published before: Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones
“The Chaser”
This boarding school novella shows a 17-year-old who starts a secret affair with his room mate Robbie, an effeminate boy who declares he wants to live and be seen as a woman. When the narrator wants to end their relationship, Robbie, who is accepted as queer by everyone, starts a mobbing campaign against him - the ensuing drama and spiral of hurt is rooted in both Robbie's anger and sadness and the narrator's cowardice.
"Stag Dace"
This is supposed to be the novel, but frankly, it's too short for the format but too long for what it is: Yes, the title-giving text is the weakest of the collection. Our narrator is a lumberjack who belongs to a gang of wood pirates, so a crew that steals wood from the state forests and sells it. His brutish, intimidatingly strong body is a source of sorrow for the man, as he dreams of being courted and taken care of for once - so when the foreman suggests a dance party in which some men are supposed to play the women (in lieu of the real deal), he volunteers. This prompts an odd competition between him and Lisen, an effeminate worker admired for his beauty who has a not-so-secret sexual relationship with the foreman.
The text ponders the difference / dysphoria between what one aims or feels to be and how a person is perceived by others - and that all hell might break loose should someone try to leave their assigned lane. The topic is great and the story is full of good ideas, but the pacing is off, and the intended old-timey tone comes off as artificial.
“The Masker"
This is a daring story that refuses to adhere to any sense of political correctness and rather does a complex psychological deep dive: Our young narrator is a cross dresser who meets a 60-ish transmedicalist trans woman in Las Vegas. The latter, Sally, mistakes the narrator for an early transition trans woman aspiring to a medical transition, and agitates against a married Latino whose fetish is wearing a silicone female bodysuit – but the narrator longs to be the Latino’s submissive lover.
The story ponders the binary within the trans community, how genderqueer people are judged within this community and whether gender role play reflects internalized misogyny. Aesthetically not Peter’s best text, but the way she illuminates these themes is unique and fascinating. Also, thank you to ContraPoints for making me aware of the whole truscum debate.
Published before: The Masker
One thing that's great about Peters is that she is not writing from a position of wanting to explain or defend trans identities, to convince cis people that trans people are valid or anything like that, no: She wants to find authentic forms to ponder trans issues in fiction, which means she doesn't care whether her characters make the trans community "look good", she does not feel beholden to showcase the good queer or deliver trauma porn. Her trans characters are complex, messy, and fascinating, they feel psychologically plausible, and the settings and stories serve to illuminate the inner worlds of the trans experience. This renders these texts so fresh and captivating and just fun to read.
You can listen to the podcast crew discussing the German translation (also called Stag Dance) here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...
“Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones"
The narrator, a beautiful upper-class trans woman, is infected with a contagious virus that prevents those afflicted from producing male or female hormones - the raging pandemic has led to a war over the access to artificial hormones in the US. The nameless protagonist was patient zero because her friend Lexi, a trans activist with a precarious background, injected her with lab materials against her will, the altercation being prompted by the pair's inability to show solidarity and love due to trauma (again and again, the text refers to actual and metaphorical scars). So packaged in a dystopian civil war thriller in which everybody is forced to fight for their hormones/gender, the text is a meditation on how the trans community is affected by an outside pressure that has the potential to unravel whole nations if they had to contend with these problems on a larger scale. This could easily become a novel or a netflix series.
Published before: Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones
“The Chaser”
This boarding school novella shows a 17-year-old who starts a secret affair with his room mate Robbie, an effeminate boy who declares he wants to live and be seen as a woman. When the narrator wants to end their relationship, Robbie, who is accepted as queer by everyone, starts a mobbing campaign against him - the ensuing drama and spiral of hurt is rooted in both Robbie's anger and sadness and the narrator's cowardice.
"Stag Dace"
This is supposed to be the novel, but frankly, it's too short for the format but too long for what it is: Yes, the title-giving text is the weakest of the collection. Our narrator is a lumberjack who belongs to a gang of wood pirates, so a crew that steals wood from the state forests and sells it. His brutish, intimidatingly strong body is a source of sorrow for the man, as he dreams of being courted and taken care of for once - so when the foreman suggests a dance party in which some men are supposed to play the women (in lieu of the real deal), he volunteers. This prompts an odd competition between him and Lisen, an effeminate worker admired for his beauty who has a not-so-secret sexual relationship with the foreman.
The text ponders the difference / dysphoria between what one aims or feels to be and how a person is perceived by others - and that all hell might break loose should someone try to leave their assigned lane. The topic is great and the story is full of good ideas, but the pacing is off, and the intended old-timey tone comes off as artificial.
“The Masker"
This is a daring story that refuses to adhere to any sense of political correctness and rather does a complex psychological deep dive: Our young narrator is a cross dresser who meets a 60-ish transmedicalist trans woman in Las Vegas. The latter, Sally, mistakes the narrator for an early transition trans woman aspiring to a medical transition, and agitates against a married Latino whose fetish is wearing a silicone female bodysuit – but the narrator longs to be the Latino’s submissive lover.
The story ponders the binary within the trans community, how genderqueer people are judged within this community and whether gender role play reflects internalized misogyny. Aesthetically not Peter’s best text, but the way she illuminates these themes is unique and fascinating. Also, thank you to ContraPoints for making me aware of the whole truscum debate.
Published before: The Masker
One thing that's great about Peters is that she is not writing from a position of wanting to explain or defend trans identities, to convince cis people that trans people are valid or anything like that, no: She wants to find authentic forms to ponder trans issues in fiction, which means she doesn't care whether her characters make the trans community "look good", she does not feel beholden to showcase the good queer or deliver trauma porn. Her trans characters are complex, messy, and fascinating, they feel psychologically plausible, and the settings and stories serve to illuminate the inner worlds of the trans experience. This renders these texts so fresh and captivating and just fun to read.
You can listen to the podcast crew discussing the German translation (also called Stag Dance) here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...
October 8, 2025
This is a collection that is not afraid to put trans characters in environments usually unfriendly to them. The fact that the characters are nuanced, multifaceted, and refuse to be boring tokenism-without minimizing the trans aspects of their lives- is actually quite impressive. I really had no idea where the stories were going. One moment they were sexy, the next disturbing, amusing, dystopian, or touching. Three of the four are great. The small novel is just okay, but that's how collections are. It's a bold, unpredictable read that’s well worth your time, if you ask me.
May 29, 2025
Genuinely so bleak
January 16, 2025
A playful and experimental collection that has a lot of great commentary, but struggled to keep my interest at times. I think part of this is just the format. Going from short stories into a novella then back to a short story makes the novella feel glaringly long. I liked the short stories for what they were, and I didn’t hate the titular novella, but it felt needlessly long. The stories also feel like they’re lacking a sense of cohesion - I get that Peters wanted to republish some of her earlier stories, but I wish there was more of a thread between entries (beyond commentary on gender).
Peters has a lot of insightful things to say about gender and gender roles across the four entries. It’s hard to encapsulate them all, but I’d say it really interrogates the idea of gender as a performance. There are instances of gender euphoria, questioning, and transitioning that all feel fresh and innovative.
Stag Dance takes every opportunity to explore the confines of gender and then push them further. It’s a unique collection and I still wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to certain readers. The individual entries are stronger than the sum of their parts, and at another time I think I would have enjoyed this more. No real standouts, but also no real boogers either!
Peters has a lot of insightful things to say about gender and gender roles across the four entries. It’s hard to encapsulate them all, but I’d say it really interrogates the idea of gender as a performance. There are instances of gender euphoria, questioning, and transitioning that all feel fresh and innovative.
Stag Dance takes every opportunity to explore the confines of gender and then push them further. It’s a unique collection and I still wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to certain readers. The individual entries are stronger than the sum of their parts, and at another time I think I would have enjoyed this more. No real standouts, but also no real boogers either!
February 26, 2025
Overall I liked this collection a lot. I loved how Peters was challenging gender and how it shows up in much more complicated, messy, and nuanced ways. I loved the way she also was exploring stereotypes and playing with the sinister side of gender politics and performance. Also a lot of play with genre constraints and tropes. Fun. The title novella was a bit long and schiticky for me, but still solid. The 2nd and 4th stories were my standouts.
October 26, 2024
Stag Dance is a genre-defying look into transness, identity, community, gender exploration, and sexuality. In "three novellas and one novel" Peters take us on a wild ride with a varied cast of main characters - a contagion survivor, a Quaker student, a giant lumberjack, and a young crossdresser. The settings, plots, characters, and tones are all unique, but essentially each story deals with a character exploring their identity and how they themselves and others perceive them. The collection doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths - violence, transphobia, misogyny, homophobia, etc. - but it also doesn't shy away from exploring the beauty in someone being able to express themselves and be seen (maybe for the first time) as that expression.
In the acknowledgements, the author says these stories were written to "puzzle out.. the inconvenient aspects of my never ending transition." I gobbled up every single story and would honestly read each of these as expanded standalone novels.
My personal ranking of the stories:
1. The Chaser (menacing, uncomfortable, sweet, violent, frustrating)
2. The Masker (honestly, same as above lol)
3. Stag Dance (intriguing, dangerous, thrilling, unique. I think I'd benefit from a re-read, especially in the tall-tale / Agropelter symbolism)
4. Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (conceptually interesting, not a personal favorite because I've read and seen tons of contagion stories. Reminded me a bit of Gretchen Felker-Martin, although I believe this story was written first)
Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
In the acknowledgements, the author says these stories were written to "puzzle out.. the inconvenient aspects of my never ending transition." I gobbled up every single story and would honestly read each of these as expanded standalone novels.
My personal ranking of the stories:
1. The Chaser (menacing, uncomfortable, sweet, violent, frustrating)
2. The Masker (honestly, same as above lol)
3. Stag Dance (intriguing, dangerous, thrilling, unique. I think I'd benefit from a re-read, especially in the tall-tale / Agropelter symbolism)
4. Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (conceptually interesting, not a personal favorite because I've read and seen tons of contagion stories. Reminded me a bit of Gretchen Felker-Martin, although I believe this story was written first)
Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
April 15, 2025
”I was thinking that I want to live in a world where everyone has to choose their gender.“
me, in the bookstore that i frequent at least three times per week about to buy a book that i definitely do not need: “no, you don’t understand, i simply NEED to have this one”
unfortunately, i didn’t enjoy the titular story but “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” slaps so hard i will think about it for years.
me, in the bookstore that i frequent at least three times per week about to buy a book that i definitely do not need: “no, you don’t understand, i simply NEED to have this one”
unfortunately, i didn’t enjoy the titular story but “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” slaps so hard i will think about it for years.
June 7, 2025
Audiobook 3.75 stars.
May 26, 2025
Well this is one of the more unique collections of fiction I've read, comprising an apocalyptic science fiction story where everyone's bodies lose the abiltiy to create hormones, a dark teen romance between a trans girl before she's out and a cis boy, a "western / tall tale" in an alternate world at an illegal winter logging camp, and a contemporary story about the breakages in sisterhood between trans women, cross-dressers, and female maskers.
They are all deeply weird, thoughtful, and not afraid to tread into the murky waters of transgender/genre conventions. Peters seems uninterested in easy answers, simple definitions, or writing well-behaved characters. I love it!
Her prose is often revelatory:
"I might as well have never learned a single English word for all that were available to me. How do you beg when you don't even know the words to beg with?"
They are all deeply weird, thoughtful, and not afraid to tread into the murky waters of transgender/genre conventions. Peters seems uninterested in easy answers, simple definitions, or writing well-behaved characters. I love it!
Her prose is often revelatory:
"I might as well have never learned a single English word for all that were available to me. How do you beg when you don't even know the words to beg with?"
February 9, 2025
Wow, wow, WOW!
Thank you NetGalley, Torrey Peters, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
I was absolutely blown away by this. This is a collection of 4 novellas and each one is very different but all very trans with a lot of repeated themes. Each novella displays a mastery of both writing and storytelling.
Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones: sci-fi and dystopian and edging into horror. A trans woman creates a drug that completely turns off sex hormone production- and it’s contagious. The idea is that once it spreads everyone will have to choose their gender, but of course there are some unintended consequences. What I loved most about this was the incredibly toxic relationship between the narrator and her frenemy/ex-lover Lexi.
The Chaser: Another very toxic relationship, this time between two teenagers at boarding school. One of them coming to terms with their identity, the other coming to terms with his sexuality. There is a lot of drama, mixed signals, petty revenge and sabotage.
Stag Dance: The main novella and longest of the collection. Told from the POV of a Paul Bunyan type character who is part of an illegal logging operation. The manager of the operation decides to hold a "stag dance" where any of the men can choose to be treated like women if they wear a fabric triangle over their crotch. Paul Bunyan wants to wear a triangle and be courted, but he’s got some competition with the camp beauty- Lisen. There is yet another toxic relationship between these two who are allies at times and other times…. Not.
The Masker: A horror(ish) story where the main character isn’t yet sure about their identity, but is experimenting with cross dressing and forced feminization erotica. Then they meet an older trans woman named Sally who takes them under her wing, but she's a little overbearing. There’s also a mysterious “masker” who is kind of creepy but also kind of enticing.
Thank you NetGalley, Torrey Peters, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.
I was absolutely blown away by this. This is a collection of 4 novellas and each one is very different but all very trans with a lot of repeated themes. Each novella displays a mastery of both writing and storytelling.
Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones: sci-fi and dystopian and edging into horror. A trans woman creates a drug that completely turns off sex hormone production- and it’s contagious. The idea is that once it spreads everyone will have to choose their gender, but of course there are some unintended consequences. What I loved most about this was the incredibly toxic relationship between the narrator and her frenemy/ex-lover Lexi.
The Chaser: Another very toxic relationship, this time between two teenagers at boarding school. One of them coming to terms with their identity, the other coming to terms with his sexuality. There is a lot of drama, mixed signals, petty revenge and sabotage.
Stag Dance: The main novella and longest of the collection. Told from the POV of a Paul Bunyan type character who is part of an illegal logging operation. The manager of the operation decides to hold a "stag dance" where any of the men can choose to be treated like women if they wear a fabric triangle over their crotch. Paul Bunyan wants to wear a triangle and be courted, but he’s got some competition with the camp beauty- Lisen. There is yet another toxic relationship between these two who are allies at times and other times…. Not.
The Masker: A horror(ish) story where the main character isn’t yet sure about their identity, but is experimenting with cross dressing and forced feminization erotica. Then they meet an older trans woman named Sally who takes them under her wing, but she's a little overbearing. There’s also a mysterious “masker” who is kind of creepy but also kind of enticing.
May 29, 2025
enjoyed the short stories, didn’t care much for the titular novella. excellent, sharp writing as expected.
April 18, 2025
It's funny, I started this in print but the first pages gave me heavy future dystopia vibes, which I was absolutely not in the mood for, so I dropped it. Turns out that the first pages are by far the heaviest of those future dystopia vibes, and that I would have been just fine if I'd turned just one or two more pages. So glad I came back to it because I really loved this collection.
The titular novel/novella is definitely my favorite. I was a little skeptical having seen a lot of Peters' publicity around the book and all the lumberjack jargon didn't sound exactly like my cup of tea. But Stag Dance does really effectively what I enjoy most about Peters' work, which is pull you in to a person so deeply and then deliver a nice gut punch or two once you're heavily invested. I LOVED this character, it helps that the audio was so perfectly narrated, bringing all the trappings of the era and with a big, hearty voice that fits the protagonist. I can see how the jargon of it could pull you out, but if you're concerned I can only encourage you to try it out on audio where the skilled reader was able to make it all sound natural. The tenderness, the pathos, amidst all the goings-on I was just more and more attached to this beautiful person who has no idea what is going on in their own damn head.
There is a lot of that in this collection, characters who do not entirely understand their own motivations. That conflict between thought and action creates so much tension and room to explore. There's a bite to many of these stories but also an emotional heft that really speaks to me.
I saw a lot of people refer to this collection as bringing in 4 different genres and I don't think that's entire correct. Sure, How to Infect is definitely going sci-fi/dystopia and Stag Dance is historical, but the genre is just a jumping off point, something to play with. And both The Chaser and The Masker are no genre at all, if anything you could call them coming-of-age but anyone claiming either of these is a romance is off the mark. How to Infect is not quite up to the mark of the other three, but it's still interesting and bold, its concept still so effectively subverting the ideas of choice when it comes to gender identity that it's worth including.
Peters' writing is just so sharp, so vibrant. She has so much to dive into and these stories are not trying to be your friend or to present an idealized version of trans-ness. I love the mess of her characters and her stories. I love the prickliness and the warmth and everything in between. I may have approached this collection with some skepticism but oh boy did it win me over.
The titular novel/novella is definitely my favorite. I was a little skeptical having seen a lot of Peters' publicity around the book and all the lumberjack jargon didn't sound exactly like my cup of tea. But Stag Dance does really effectively what I enjoy most about Peters' work, which is pull you in to a person so deeply and then deliver a nice gut punch or two once you're heavily invested. I LOVED this character, it helps that the audio was so perfectly narrated, bringing all the trappings of the era and with a big, hearty voice that fits the protagonist. I can see how the jargon of it could pull you out, but if you're concerned I can only encourage you to try it out on audio where the skilled reader was able to make it all sound natural. The tenderness, the pathos, amidst all the goings-on I was just more and more attached to this beautiful person who has no idea what is going on in their own damn head.
There is a lot of that in this collection, characters who do not entirely understand their own motivations. That conflict between thought and action creates so much tension and room to explore. There's a bite to many of these stories but also an emotional heft that really speaks to me.
I saw a lot of people refer to this collection as bringing in 4 different genres and I don't think that's entire correct. Sure, How to Infect is definitely going sci-fi/dystopia and Stag Dance is historical, but the genre is just a jumping off point, something to play with. And both The Chaser and The Masker are no genre at all, if anything you could call them coming-of-age but anyone claiming either of these is a romance is off the mark. How to Infect is not quite up to the mark of the other three, but it's still interesting and bold, its concept still so effectively subverting the ideas of choice when it comes to gender identity that it's worth including.
Peters' writing is just so sharp, so vibrant. She has so much to dive into and these stories are not trying to be your friend or to present an idealized version of trans-ness. I love the mess of her characters and her stories. I love the prickliness and the warmth and everything in between. I may have approached this collection with some skepticism but oh boy did it win me over.
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April 6, 2025Loved itttttt!!
April 17, 2025
Each story was incredibly immersive. The lumberjack lingo wore on me a bit, but when it was over, I wanted more. I will read anything Torrey Peters writes.
March 14, 2025
Perfect and chilling. Explores desire- for transformation, for the self, for others- both clinically and intimately, painting portraits of characters warped by their longing. I'll be thinking about "The Chaser" for a long time.
June 30, 2025
then:
W o w.
Need to collect my thoughts for a while, in a dark corner.
now:
I pretty much loved all of the stories in here: they made me feel uncomfortable, challenged, I got visceral and emotional reactions and also it made my brain whirrrr in a really nice way. Talked about it at book club right after I finished it and found even more to enjoy and appreciate as I was slowly processing it. [Also right after I finished it? My hold on Detransition, Baby came in from the library, so I will get right on that]
I just loved the genre elements in the stories and how they folded into very fucked up and engaging and detailed and *real* relationships between gender non-conforming people. I loved how it approached gender performance from so many perspectives (especially The Chaser and Stag Dance have some very wry commentary on how cis men perform their gender for one another and how they're able to switch it up a bit under the right, socially-approved circumstances).
Most of the characters are not likable, but that's what made me love them and empathize and connect to them on quite a deep level, even the ones on the more villainous side (yeah, even Felix). This world is fucked up and it tends to twist you in fucked up ways. There's also something extremely fascinating revealed in the stories: how gender affirmation (for all people) can sometimes be found in the more negative acts - think of cis men being in a fight and that proving their manhood somehow.
I wish I could be more articulate about this book, but the other option for this review is to do another reading, a closer one, with notes and spend way too much time writing an essay and I don't have time and energy for that (sadly), so it will just be this!
W o w.
Need to collect my thoughts for a while, in a dark corner.
now:
I pretty much loved all of the stories in here: they made me feel uncomfortable, challenged, I got visceral and emotional reactions and also it made my brain whirrrr in a really nice way. Talked about it at book club right after I finished it and found even more to enjoy and appreciate as I was slowly processing it. [Also right after I finished it? My hold on Detransition, Baby came in from the library, so I will get right on that]
I just loved the genre elements in the stories and how they folded into very fucked up and engaging and detailed and *real* relationships between gender non-conforming people. I loved how it approached gender performance from so many perspectives (especially The Chaser and Stag Dance have some very wry commentary on how cis men perform their gender for one another and how they're able to switch it up a bit under the right, socially-approved circumstances).
Most of the characters are not likable, but that's what made me love them and empathize and connect to them on quite a deep level, even the ones on the more villainous side (yeah, even Felix). This world is fucked up and it tends to twist you in fucked up ways. There's also something extremely fascinating revealed in the stories: how gender affirmation (for all people) can sometimes be found in the more negative acts - think of cis men being in a fight and that proving their manhood somehow.
I wish I could be more articulate about this book, but the other option for this review is to do another reading, a closer one, with notes and spend way too much time writing an essay and I don't have time and energy for that (sadly), so it will just be this!
Read
April 7, 2025I feel dumbstruck by this book in the best way and I'm not sure how to write about it. This book opens with a sort of dystopian horror sci-fi litfic and then includes some other stuff too. And while that's not my usual jam, I'm so happy I took this genre vacation because this was compelling, propulsive, thought-provoking, clever, uncomfortable, eye-opening. This book does a neat thing with subversion within subversion. Which is not unlike Transition, Baby - I can see some core stories at play. But also sometimes I really appreciate complicated, complex and flawed protagonists who make baffling, terrible and impossible decisions. Stag Dance has that in spades! It felt really smart, and the way the stories connected, weaved together and contrasted was very cool. I can see how it took a decade of writing to bring it together. I was particularly rapt by the end of the titular story after having a bit of trouble easing into the unfamiliar language and lingo. I'm not sure what else to say. I think this was excellent and it really worked for me and I can't wait to talk to people about it because it's a book that begs to be analyzed! I'm also curious about how some of it would be delivered in audio.
I received a digital Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I finished this a bit late but I'd still call it book 6 of my 2025 Trans Rights Readathon. I donated to LGBT YouthLine, which offers free peer support to 2SLGBTQ youth in my home province.
The Trans Rights Readathon is an annual call to action to readers and book lovers in support of Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) on March 31st.
We are calling on the reader community to read and uplift books written by and/or featuring trans, nonbinary, 2Spirit, and gender-nonconforming authors and characters.
I received a digital Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I finished this a bit late but I'd still call it book 6 of my 2025 Trans Rights Readathon. I donated to LGBT YouthLine, which offers free peer support to 2SLGBTQ youth in my home province.
The Trans Rights Readathon is an annual call to action to readers and book lovers in support of Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) on March 31st.
We are calling on the reader community to read and uplift books written by and/or featuring trans, nonbinary, 2Spirit, and gender-nonconforming authors and characters.
June 29, 2025
Okay, wow. What fantastic vision.
STAG DANCE is made up of 4 stories (well, actually it’s billed as one novel and 3 stories). Each is told through different genres —all evoking different vibes and takeaways.
“Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” is a dystopian sci-fi which ponders this thesis: What if everyone was forced to choose their own gender?
“The Chaser” is a campus coming-of-age twisty romance. Two students’ sexual awakenings & where these desires take them. Extremely good story—I love how this one just builds and builds until we hit violent catharsis.
“Stag Dance” (the longest entry) is a historical fiction western. An outwardly domineering (and feared) masculine type yearns to be seen as feminine and delicate. This story/novel subverts a genre that is typically testosterone-fueled by creating something quite vulnerable, fluid, and tender without sacrificing the gritty intensity of the genre. Awestruck. Hands down my fave entry in this book.
“The Masker” is a psychosexual thriller. Our protagonist is faced with two choices. And these blur the lines between fetish, desire, and play acting.
I’ll be real: I really enjoyed the first story (wish it was longer), but the next three stories were next level. My head is spinning. Not many writers can be masters at every genre they attempt. And here we get total successful genre-mashups. This book took me to wild places, truly exhilarating. I’m sat.
STAG DANCE is made up of 4 stories (well, actually it’s billed as one novel and 3 stories). Each is told through different genres —all evoking different vibes and takeaways.
“Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” is a dystopian sci-fi which ponders this thesis: What if everyone was forced to choose their own gender?
“The Chaser” is a campus coming-of-age twisty romance. Two students’ sexual awakenings & where these desires take them. Extremely good story—I love how this one just builds and builds until we hit violent catharsis.
“Stag Dance” (the longest entry) is a historical fiction western. An outwardly domineering (and feared) masculine type yearns to be seen as feminine and delicate. This story/novel subverts a genre that is typically testosterone-fueled by creating something quite vulnerable, fluid, and tender without sacrificing the gritty intensity of the genre. Awestruck. Hands down my fave entry in this book.
“The Masker” is a psychosexual thriller. Our protagonist is faced with two choices. And these blur the lines between fetish, desire, and play acting.
I’ll be real: I really enjoyed the first story (wish it was longer), but the next three stories were next level. My head is spinning. Not many writers can be masters at every genre they attempt. And here we get total successful genre-mashups. This book took me to wild places, truly exhilarating. I’m sat.
Read
March 6, 2025Torrey Peters's critically acclaimed 2021 debut novel Detransition, Baby quickly became one of the most popular and well-known trans novels ever written. Needless to say, her follow-up is highly anticipated! It includes three short stories and a novel. Stag Dance follows a group of lumberjacks who plan a dance that requires some of them to volunteer to dance as women. I'll let the description say the rest: "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."
—Danika Ellis, 11 Must-Read New Queer Books Out in March 2025
—Danika Ellis, 11 Must-Read New Queer Books Out in March 2025
April 3, 2025
Stellar — even better than Detransition, Baby, inasmuch as this collection took itself seriously as a trans literary intervention, a catalog of complex, contradictory, and often challenging experiences both lived and speculated upon. Peters has truly mastered the short story, and this is the form in which she most shines — every piece in this collection sticks in my memory like a blade and shines on its own. Taken together, Stag Dance has mapped sites of trans and transed (because many of these stories index trans less as a singular identity and more as an orientation or set of lifeways) survival, pain, and lust that that I have rarely, if ever, seen on the page before. Just excellent.
October 27, 2025
This is a collection of three short stories and a novella, and while I loved the stories, the novella was a weak point in the book for me. My absolute favourite short story was The Chaser, about a boy at boarding school who is ashamed of his sexual involvement with his effeminate roommate. The way it portrayed teenage social dynamics felt so true to life and there were multiple moments that almost made me cry. The titular novella, Stag Dance, is set at a logging camp, and I think I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it, if that makes sense? I like that it showed the experience of someone who wants desperately to be seen as attractive and feminine but is perceived as neither, but I’m also personally not that interested in reading about a logging camp. Still, this collection is definitely worth reading, because the short stories have stuck with me.
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!
May 13, 2025
DNF 25%. Loved Detransition Baby. Liked this general idea for a story and the human interactions. Could not sit through the excessive, gratuitous animal disparagement and gruesome cruelty used as shallow literary plot devices- where pigs exist as creatures to both abhor and justifiably abuse. If the author did do any research on farmed animals for this book, she did so only in places that harm them. It's a shame, because I really wanted to finish this.
I usually don't give DNFs a star rating, but given how much I wish I would have been warned, maybe someone reading reviews first and sorting by 1 star will save themself a very triggering experience by skipping this book or at least this part of it.
I usually don't give DNFs a star rating, but given how much I wish I would have been warned, maybe someone reading reviews first and sorting by 1 star will save themself a very triggering experience by skipping this book or at least this part of it.
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May 17, 2025god bless torrey peters for not once, not one single time trying to make anything about these stories easily digestible for cishet people.
October 29, 2025
I saw Torrey Peters speaking recently at an event. She was warm, funny, engaging, feisty. My strongest memory of that night was how she began. She spoke of having a sense that, yes this is a time of great persecution for the trans community and that is terrifying, but that this is also a time where trans people are getting to share their stories more than ever. And that that is something we must celebrate. And I’m so grateful that I get to read stories from her vivid imagination.
From this collection I really enjoyed Stag Dance, the longest of the stories which gives us a chance to really get to know the character in all their complex glory. But my absolute standout favourite was The Chaser. I don’t think I’ve read a short story in a long time (maybe ever) that just punched its way so solidly into my brain. It’s clever and devastating in a perfect way.
From this collection I really enjoyed Stag Dance, the longest of the stories which gives us a chance to really get to know the character in all their complex glory. But my absolute standout favourite was The Chaser. I don’t think I’ve read a short story in a long time (maybe ever) that just punched its way so solidly into my brain. It’s clever and devastating in a perfect way.
![Profile Image for laurel [the suspected bibliophile].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1645808644i%2F7494844._UX200_CR0%2C6%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
March 30, 2025
Overall, a bit too literary for my tastes?
Yet compulsively readable.
Heavy, heavy warnings for transphobia, nonconsensual acts, graphic animal death, and intense self-loathing.
Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones
In a future where you have to choose your gender after the human (and possibly animal) body no longer produces gender hormones, a tension rages, filled with anger toward those believed to have started the epidemic. An interesting premise, but it didn't feel as fully realized as I'd wanted it to be.
The Chaser
At a Quaker boarding school, two students engage in a tryst, to disastrous effects. I kinda liked this one more, as it depicted a student who was dangerously manipulative and awful and played the victim to get what they wanted. I was stalked in college, not at all in the way this was, and it brought some really startling flashbacks.
Stag Dance
Weirdly, I felt like this was too long. And I got tired of reading about Babe's fugly mug. It was okay.
Masker
A young trans woman at a weekend party chooses between a seductively controlling fetishist and the ex-DEA trans woman offering tepidly unglamorous sisterhood. This one just felt icky.
Yet compulsively readable.
Heavy, heavy warnings for transphobia, nonconsensual acts, graphic animal death, and intense self-loathing.
Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones
In a future where you have to choose your gender after the human (and possibly animal) body no longer produces gender hormones, a tension rages, filled with anger toward those believed to have started the epidemic. An interesting premise, but it didn't feel as fully realized as I'd wanted it to be.
The Chaser
At a Quaker boarding school, two students engage in a tryst, to disastrous effects. I kinda liked this one more, as it depicted a student who was dangerously manipulative and awful and played the victim to get what they wanted. I was stalked in college, not at all in the way this was, and it brought some really startling flashbacks.
Stag Dance
Weirdly, I felt like this was too long. And I got tired of reading about Babe's fugly mug. It was okay.
Masker
A young trans woman at a weekend party chooses between a seductively controlling fetishist and the ex-DEA trans woman offering tepidly unglamorous sisterhood. This one just felt icky.
March 12, 2025
ARC gifted by publisher
rounding up on the strength of The Chaser
Peters has a way of getting you to follow along even when you have no clue what is happening. You just trust her. I don’t mean that her work is overly complicated or obtuse, quite the opposite actually. I would describe her writing as inviting, tender, smart, funny, and bold. Just reading that makes me realize that that’s how I would describe this book overall. What I really mean though is that Peters will drop you in a situation with certain dynamics or a particular vocabulary and trusts you to figure it out or to read between the lines.
You’re either her audience or you learn to be.
In this collection she uses her wit and insight to explore ideas of gender, performance and desire with the use of different genres. What is genre if not a form of dress up? This is risky and exciting.
Infect Your Friends And Loved Ones - a spec fic and revenge fantasy rolled into one. What if everyone was dependent on hormone injections to breed? What if you can’t get over or get rid of that toxic ex? I honestly wanted more from this one. I needed both more character and world development.
The Chaser - a coming of age/ boarding school drama that ended up being the heart of the collection for me. I felt the overly complicated feelings of the characters here and was broken by the end. I went from gd it Robbie, to oh no Robbie 😭. My god do we spiral in this one. How much do you risk for desire? What if you don’t even understand your desires? Can we manipulate others' choices or actions? I would have loved it if the whole book just followed these two characters at different points in their lives.
Stag Dance - maybe a tall tale, maybe a western? A dance where lumberjacks choose the gender they want to attend as. Unlike Infect, I wanted this one to be tightened up. If anything this one highlights Peters’ mastery of how language shapes our understanding of gender and what ‘transition’ can mean. Taking the idea of costumes and play into such a specific setting is so perfectly her.
The Masker - horror in Vegas. A ‘sissy’ must choose between their forced feminization fantasies or the reality of transitioning and all the consequences that come along with it. What do we really want? And are we going to choose what is good for us or accept who we are? Freaky and wild.
rounding up on the strength of The Chaser
Peters has a way of getting you to follow along even when you have no clue what is happening. You just trust her. I don’t mean that her work is overly complicated or obtuse, quite the opposite actually. I would describe her writing as inviting, tender, smart, funny, and bold. Just reading that makes me realize that that’s how I would describe this book overall. What I really mean though is that Peters will drop you in a situation with certain dynamics or a particular vocabulary and trusts you to figure it out or to read between the lines.
You’re either her audience or you learn to be.
In this collection she uses her wit and insight to explore ideas of gender, performance and desire with the use of different genres. What is genre if not a form of dress up? This is risky and exciting.
Infect Your Friends And Loved Ones - a spec fic and revenge fantasy rolled into one. What if everyone was dependent on hormone injections to breed? What if you can’t get over or get rid of that toxic ex? I honestly wanted more from this one. I needed both more character and world development.
The Chaser - a coming of age/ boarding school drama that ended up being the heart of the collection for me. I felt the overly complicated feelings of the characters here and was broken by the end. I went from gd it Robbie, to oh no Robbie 😭. My god do we spiral in this one. How much do you risk for desire? What if you don’t even understand your desires? Can we manipulate others' choices or actions? I would have loved it if the whole book just followed these two characters at different points in their lives.
Stag Dance - maybe a tall tale, maybe a western? A dance where lumberjacks choose the gender they want to attend as. Unlike Infect, I wanted this one to be tightened up. If anything this one highlights Peters’ mastery of how language shapes our understanding of gender and what ‘transition’ can mean. Taking the idea of costumes and play into such a specific setting is so perfectly her.
The Masker - horror in Vegas. A ‘sissy’ must choose between their forced feminization fantasies or the reality of transitioning and all the consequences that come along with it. What do we really want? And are we going to choose what is good for us or accept who we are? Freaky and wild.
April 21, 2025
(4.5) When I say I want more unusual & diverse trans fiction this is exactly what I mean. Three short stories - one post apocalyptic, another set at a boarding school, the final at a transfem party weekend in present day vegas - and a historical fiction novella set at an illegal logging camp in I assume the early 1900s.
I LOVED the titular novella, Stag Dance. The writing was so good, with old timey lumberjack slang, and the setting of a lumberjack camp in the mountains was atmospheric and slightly eerie. I loved the characters and their interactions, as well as the hint of the supernatural - parts of this story were genuinely beautiful. I don’t want to reveal too much but I will be thinking about this one for a long time.
The post apocalyptic short story was very good but I’m honestly just not into the genre, so I didn’t vibe with it as much. The boarding school story was imo the weakest of the lot, but still very solid and a good exploration of teenage desire, obsession and betrayal. Finally the vegas story - grim and weirdly erotic and just a great way to end the book.
Overall this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and I wasn’t disappointed!
I LOVED the titular novella, Stag Dance. The writing was so good, with old timey lumberjack slang, and the setting of a lumberjack camp in the mountains was atmospheric and slightly eerie. I loved the characters and their interactions, as well as the hint of the supernatural - parts of this story were genuinely beautiful. I don’t want to reveal too much but I will be thinking about this one for a long time.
The post apocalyptic short story was very good but I’m honestly just not into the genre, so I didn’t vibe with it as much. The boarding school story was imo the weakest of the lot, but still very solid and a good exploration of teenage desire, obsession and betrayal. Finally the vegas story - grim and weirdly erotic and just a great way to end the book.
Overall this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and I wasn’t disappointed!
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