Torrey Peters
Torrey Peters is an American author. Her debut novel, "Detransition, Baby", published by Penguin Random House, has received mainstream and critical success. The novel was nominated for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Early life and education. Peters was born in Evanston, Illinois. Her father was a professor and her mother was a lawyer. She grew up in Chicago, later attending Hampshire College. She graduated from the University of Iowa with an MFA and from Dartmouth College with an MA in Comparative Literature. Peters came out as transgender at age 26. At 30, she began taking hormones  to physically transition. 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". "The Masker" is about a sissy contemplating transitioning from male to female. 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. "Glamour Boutique", Peters's third novella, explores a casual Craigslist encounter at a crossdressers ’ boutique store. 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. Section::::"Detransition, Baby". Peters' debut novel, "Detransition, Baby", published by Penguin Random House in 2021, was met with critical success and praise crafting a tender exploration of gender, parenthood, and love. The main characters are Reese, a trans woman, PR executive and former partner of Amy; Amy, who detransitions and becomes Ames; and Katrina, a Chinese Jewish woman who is Ames' boss and pregnant  with his child. 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. 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." In 2021, Peters said that while she was writing the book in 2018, "I was just thinking about what was going to be funny for my friends and what was pertinent to  our lives", and "I had the freedom to imagine trans people as just quotidian, boring, flawed people. I wasn't engaging with trans people as an embattled group." 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. "Detransition, Baby" was nominated for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction, making Peters the first openly trans woman nominated for the award. The longlisting of Peters was met  with some controversy from those who did not consider her to be a woman. A letter argued that she is "male" and therefore should not be eligible for the prize. Its list of signatories included atheist writer Ophelia Benson and environmentalist Rebecca Lush, but as a rhetorical strategy the letter also included long-dead writers such as Emily Dickinson and Willa Cather. Authors including Melinda Salisbury, Joanne Harris, and 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 condemning the letter and defending the  decision to nominate Peters' book. 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. Personal life. In 2009, Peters married Olive Minor. In 2010, the pair lived in Kampala, Uganda while Minor worked on an ethnography of Uganda's only lesbian bar. The strain of suppressing her gender amid Uganda's debate over the 2009 Anti-Homosexuality Bill caused Peters to leave Kampala while Minor completed her research. Peters and Minor divorced in 2015 but remain close friends. Peters  lives in New York with her wife, whom she married that month.