Chapter 41: Learning to Forget with Torrey Peters

This week, Amy and Laurie consummate their love in a rowboat. Their romance has mystified readers and scholars for over a hundred years, but here, today, right now, award-winning author Torrey Peters will help us get to the bottom of it. (Spoiler alert: Laurie is the bottom.)

Torrey is the author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Best Debut Novel. It was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Gotham Book Prize. It was also a finalist for the Women’s Prize, and more than twenty publications named it one of the best books of 2021. Her next book, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, is forthcoming. She rides a pink motorcycle, and she splits her time between Brooklyn and an off-grid cabin in Vermont.

Our cover art is by Mattie Lubchansky. It interpolates the cover art for Bethany C. Morrow's book "So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix," with permission from Macmillan Children's Publishing Group. It also interpolates the cover art for Hena Khan’s book “More to the Story,” with permission from Simon & Schuster. Our theme music is Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 16 in C Major. This episode was edited by Antoinette Smith.