Torrey Peters grew up in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb just outside of Chicago, before attending the Scattergood Friends School, a Quaker boarding school in Iowa. She later pursued her undergrad at Hampshire College.
In an interview for the New York City Trans Oral History Project, Torrey discusses the lack of community she faced growing up and her separation from other LGBTQ people during her childhood. She continues to discuss her experiences with the Trans community during her undergrad, where she was not public with her identity.
While discussing Jacques’ Cabaret in Boston she talks about the inability to pursue and enter these spaces of community “I was a broke college student trying to fund two sort of social worlds”(2018 NYC Public Library). She continued later in the interview that even in college the majority of the trans community at Hampshire was trans men and was much less open to trans women; she knew of only one openly trans woman on campus.
Peter’s is also open with the disconnect she felt from what she had thought the definition of a trans woman was in the early 2000s. In the same interview for the New York City Trans Oral History Project, she mentions that “I didn’t want to be punk, I wanted to be pretty, I wanted to wear a nice pink dress”(2018 NYC Public Library) and “Like, every trans woman I knew in the early 2000s, wore black cut-off jeans and had tattoos”(2018 NYC Public Library). Her wants and ideas of her gender presentation were not what she had thought trans women were allowed to be.
She continued her education and received her MFA from the University of Iowa, and later also received her Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth.
Torrey spent a lot of time moving around throughout her early adult life. After undergrad, she worked for the PBS news show, Newshour with Jim Lair, and then moved to Iowa for her MFA. She came out during her first year at the University of Iowa.
She has written articles and stories which have been published in a variety of publications from Epoch to Gawker. While she was living in Seattle Washington, the article which Peters’ wrote for Gawker, “The Crossdressing Room” in 2012 is a piece that she feels there is no truth in. She said in a profile published on them. that “I didn’t know why I was writing at the time. I didn’t know what writing is for. I didn’t know how, to be honest” (2018 them.). She continues to explain in the article how she figured out how to write her truth when she read Nevada by Imogen Binnie. After reading she moved from Seattle to Brooklyn in order to work with Topside Press, who had worked with a variety of trans and queer authors.
After moving back to Brooklyn Peter’s has written three short novellas, two of which are posted online on her website. “The Masker” was published in April of 2016, “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones” was published in August of the same year, and “Glamour Boutique” was published a year later in August of 2017.
On her website (Torrypeters.com) she has a pay as you can for a digital download. This gives anyone who wishes to read “The Masker” or “Infect Your Friends and Loved ones” the ability to read the works for no cost.
Torrey Peter’s is currently in the process of publishing a novel titled Detransition, Baby which we will be released with One World/Random House in August of 2020.
Important Links:
Torrey Peters: On “Transgender Day of Remembrance: A Found Essay”
“Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones”
Torrey Peters Official Website
Social Media:
Works Cited:
“Torrey Peters.” NYPL Community Oral History Project | NYC Trans Oral History Project | Torrey Peters, June 2018, oralhistory.nypl.org/interviews/torrey-peters-5w7go3.
Walker, Harron. “Trans Author Torrey Peters Wants to Air Our Dirty Laundry.” Them., Them., 13 Mar. 2018, www.them.us/story/torrey-peters-wants-a-challenge.