Zend Framework: Transforming post data before reaching Resource

Question

I have a Zend Framework 2 project using Apigility, and I want to be able to send an array of objects via POST to create multiple entities at once. However, ZF/Rest/Resource automatically converts arrays to objects when making a POST. To make the logic a bit cleaner, I would like to convert the data array to an object of my liking (putting the array into a key such as 'storage') before it reaches the Resource.

// ZF\Rest\RestController

public function create($data) //$data is an array
{
    $events = $this->getEventManager();
    $events->trigger('create.pre', $this, array('data' => $data));

    try {
        // I want to convert $data to an object by this point
        $entity = $this->getResource()->create($data);
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
        return new ApiProblem($this->getHttpStatusCodeFromException($e), $e);
    }

I thought there must be a way to hook into the create.pre event to do this. I've attached a method which gets the Request from the Event, and gets, converts, and sets the Content of the Request, but my debugger says the Resource is still receiving the original array. I've also tried $event->setParam('data', $object), and this didn't work either. (I assume because the parameters are an array and not passed by reference.) Am I going about this the wrong way, or is this not possible?