Torrey Peters lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth. She is the author of two novellas, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker. @torreypeters
Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You (2026) Julián Delgado Lopera "Every once in a while you come across a book so bursting with life that the pages seem to be sprouting, delivered in a never-heard-before idiom that must have been invented just to transmit so much aliveness. Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You is that book and Julian Delgado Lopera is one of the most exciting writers in all the Americas."
Crawl (2025) Max Delsohn "Max Delsohn has a poet's sense of yearning, a stand-up's sense of timing, and a 3 a.m. hookup's desperate frankness about sex-all of which combine to make Crawl one of my favorite story collections of the past few years."
My Train Leaves at Three (2025) Natalie Guerrero "My Train Leaves at Three is an act of alchemy: Guerrero takes the numbness of grief and the mangled aspirations of youth, and transforms them into moments and characters that are searingly alive, achingly gorgeous in their hard-won wisdom."
The Compound (2025) Aisling Rawle "The Compound is a debut so gripping and propulsive that it beats reality TV at its own game. Why watch TV when Aisling Rawle does it better?"
When the Harvest Comes (2025) Denne Michele Norris "This is a book to sink into, to luxuriate within--a book that's generous with the pleasures and comforts of a good story and rich characters, so much so that it's only when you're finished that you realize that you've never before read something quite like it."
Make Sure You Die Screaming (2025) Zee Carlstrom "Make Sure You Die Screaming roars to life from page one and never lets up. It's a Fear and Loathing for the generation devastated by the generation that brought us Fear and Loathing."
All the World Beside (2024) Garrard Conley "Part spell, part prayer, wholly mesmerizing. Garrard Conley casts the same magic in fiction as in the memoir that made him famous."
People Collide (2023) Isle McElroy "A profound and moving meditation on love and commitment swapped into the body of a gripping literary thriller - I predict Isle McElroy's People Collide will inaugurate an entire genre."
Biography of X (2023) Catherine Lacey "Biography of Xis the most ambitious book I've ever read from a writer of my own generation. Epic world-building revealed through intimate emotion and dangerously honed sentences; a story that mixes fact and fiction to create a new register of truth, a register that belongs entirely to Catherine Lacey. I'm awed."
X (2022) Davey Davis "Davis is an astounding writer, seemingly unconstrained by taboos and waist deep down in the maw of life, examining what the rest of us shy away from--never more than here in X, the rare book that can thrill and entertain, while simultaneously causing you to question everything about how you're living."
We Do What We Do in the Dark (2022) Michelle Hart "A beautiful book so filled with sharp longing and perfectly phrased vulnerability that I read it in a reverent hush."
At Certain Points We Touch (2022) Lauren John Joseph "Lauren John Joseph writes with such wit, glamour, and style! I haven't read a book that so powerfully evokes what it's like to be a wild young artist among other wild young artists since the Bright Young Things."
Manhunt (2022) Gretchen Felker-Martin "Felker-Martin can write: Manhunt expertly drops one political target after another, breaks your heart with nearly every character, and keeps up a relentless velocity-- all while just being plain fun as hell."
Manywhere (2022) Morgan Thomas "Each of the stories in Manywhere is so surprising, with such range. A gorgeous chorus of voices joining to sing the vision of a singular and exciting artist."
Summer Fun (2021) Jeanne Thornton "I anticipated the release of Summer Fun for six years, and now that I finally got to read it, its characters and story will linger with me much longer than that. I suspect it will come to be considered the Pet Sounds of trans literature: a masterpiece that feels both astonishingly new and comfortingly familiar."
Skye Falling (2021) Mia McKenzie "Mia McKenzie is writer who can move from heartbreak to laughter in a single paragraph, while brilliantly reinventing queer family and friendship and the ways in which we get stuck and unstuck along the way. When I could manage to put this book down, I looked up from its pages to a world charged with new potential."
Future Feeling (2021) Joss Lake "I devoured this funny, charming book of trans friendships and sly cultural commentary; a story about what truly matters for those of us lost in the maelstrom of identity and media. Here's how unable I was to put it down: I accidentally dropped it in the toilet, fished it out, and kept right on reading."
Nevada (2013) Imogen Binnie "Nevada is a book that changed my life: it shaped both my worldview and personhood, making me the writer I am. And it did so by the oldest of methods, by telling a wise, hilarious, and gripping story."
