Discomforting ... Peters excels at plumbing the murky hearts of queer people ... 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.
Genre-defying ... Taken altogether, Peters’ writing truly defies pigeonholing, pushing through genre and styles as she interrogates gender and various performances of it in multiple directions ... Moving.
Genre-bending and gender-bending ... Peters asks many questions throughout these stories, and answers very few. What does shine throughout is a bone-deep love for trans women, especially trans women who refuse to play by the rules.
Electrifying ... Peters explores her characters’ conundrums with striking honesty, revealing how they’re bound by indecision and insecurities from finding happiness, and she exhibits spectacular flexibility with language and form. It’s a marvel.