WHEN DETRANSITION, BABY came out in 2021, Torrey Peters called her debut novel a trans Fleabag. The book’s premise—a trans woman, her ex who has detransitioned, and the ex’s new girlfriend all contemplate raising a baby together—certainly has the makings of a TV show. The national best seller turned Peters into the latest de facto face of trans lit, though she had already been a major figure in the DIY trans-lit scene. Peters self-published short stories and novellas inspired by the erstwhile Topside Press, the indie publisher of trans and feminist fiction by such spiky writers as Imogen Binnie, Casey Plett, Cat Fitzpatrick, and Jeanne Thornton. Peters has used the spotlight to redirect focus onto many in this old guard. Now, two of her earlier works have been republished alongside new fiction in a collection called Stag Dance. Rather than being a straightforward novel about trans girls running around New York working through “gender feels,” valida-tion, and “consent or whatever,” as Detransition, Baby’s Reese puts it, Peters’s new book chronicles a grittier aesthetic milieu. The titular story, the book’s longest, is a western set entirely before our modern conception of transness. The other three pieces run the genre gamut from romance to dystopian sci-fi.

Notably, Peters seems to intentionally avoid writing into the “trans experience.” She examines the messy underbelly of DIY trans culture, diving into the cringier aspects of queer growing pains. The stories, jagged tales of sissies, losers, and assholes, showcase a more expansive palette and are written with sharp prose that crackles with transgressive glee.

Her collection asks the question, What if some people knew they were trans but refused to transition?