Torrey Peters

Torrey Peters is an American author.^[1][2] Her debut novel, Detransition, Baby, published by Penguin Random House, has received mainstream and critical success.^[3][4] The novel was nominated for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction.^[5]

Early life and education[]

Peters was born near Chicago, Illinois.^[6] Her father was a professor and her mother was a lawyer.^[6]

She grew up in Chicago, later attending Hampshire College.^[7] She graduated from the University of Iowa with an MFA and from Dartmouth College with an MA in Comparative Literature.^[8][9]

Peters came out as transgender at age 26. At 30, she began taking hormones to physically transition.^[6]

Work[]

Peters’s first two self-published novellas, The Masker and Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, were published online in 2016 and reviewed by writer Harron Walker for them.^[1] The Masker is about a sissy contemplating transitioning from male to female.^[8] Set in a dystopian future where bioterrorism has destroyed the body's ability to produce sex hormones, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones follows Patient Zero and her cat-and-mouse relationship with Lexi, a working-class, gun-obsessed trans girl.^[10] Glamour Boutique, Peters's third novella, explores a casual Craigslist encounter at a crossdressers’ boutique store.^[8]

She has written reviews for a breadth of transgender and gender non-conforming authors, such as Janet Mock, Akwaeke Emezi, and Casey Plett, who have published books through Arsenal Pulp Press, Metonymy, and Topside Press.^[11]

Detransition, Baby[]

Peters' debut novel, Detransition, Baby, published by Penguin Random House in 2021, has been met with critical success and praise crafting a tender exploration of gender, parenthood, and love.^[12][13] The novel follows Reese, a trans woman longing to be a mother by sleeping with married men; Ames, previously Amy, who lived as a trans woman before detransitioning to live again as male; and Katrina, a Chinese Jewish woman who is pregnant with Ames’s child. Ames suggests that Katrina let Reese assist in raising the baby with them, because he will be unable to fully be present as a “father.”^[14][15] Peters has stated that the character of Ames is inspired by an experience she had in 2016, when she visited Mexico and wore a suit to pass as male and avoid questions from customs about her male passport.^[6]

Peters reflected that the novel is written in the genre of a soap opera and that the novel's characters talk "how I talk with my friends."^[16][17]

The dedication for Detransition, Baby is addressed to "divorced cis women". Peters' reasoning for this is that "divorced cis women must start over at a point in adulthood when they're supposed to be established", which she compares to what trans women experience.^[18]

Detransition, Baby was nominated for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, making Peters the first openly trans woman nominated for the award.^[19] The longlisting of Peters was met with some controversy, including an open letter published online by the Wild Woman Writing Club. The letter argued that Peters is "male" and therefore should not be eligible for a prize created for women.^[20] Its list of signatories included atheist writer Ophelia Benson and environmentalist Rebecca Lush, along with long-dead writers such as Emily Dickinson and Willa Cather.^[21] Authors including Naoise Dolan, another nominee for the 2021 prize, condemned the letter and expressed their support for Peters. The organisers of the prize released a statement defending the decision to nominate Peters' book.^[22]

In early 2021, a TV adaptation of Detransition, Baby was announced. Grey’s Anatomy writer-producers Joan Rater and Tony Phelan are the showrunners for the drama/comedy television adaptation.^[23]

Personal life[]

In 2009, Peters married Melissa Minor (later known as Olive Melissa Minor); the two later divorced.^{[7][24][25][26]} As of April 2021, Peters lives in New York with her fiancée.^[6]

References[]