Vanishing Twins

A lyrical memoir about open marriage, autotheory, desire, identity, art, ambition, and identity, for fans of Graywolf Nonfiction Prize winners, Roland Barthes's A Lover’s Discourse, Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, or Chris Kraus's I Love Dick

A mesmerizing, quickly immersive narrative told through shifting mediums of correspondence; a couple opening up their relationship to distance and other partners; a blend of personal experience, references to art/performance, and auto-theory.

Lyrical and lucid, Leah Dieterich's memoir is of the zeitgeist, straddling the literary and the popular topics of our day  A provocative, intelligent and playful entry into the national cultural discussion about open marriage. Vanishing Twins explores open marriage in the context of queer identity; discovering and wanting to explore her own desires led Leah and her husband to explore an unconventional marriage

Open marriages have recently in mainstream conversation thanks in part to May 2017 pieces like The New York Times Magazine’s divisive “Is an Open Marriage a Happier Marriage?” (May 2017) and the NPR feature on how Netflix, Amazon, MTV Networks, and other major television players were portraying «open relationships as…an ongoing part of storylines, key to driving plots and understanding major characters. They're not just stunts… Based on conversations with MTV viewers, [one executive] added, there's probably not enough representation of unconventional and polyamorous relationships on TV.»

The smart and cheeky wordplay throughout Vanishing Twins is delightful and insightful; words and their meaning assume a three-dimensional space in the narrator's world, motivating decisions and opening doors of discovery: «The connections she ties between typography and twinning and ballet and sex are unexpected and frequently magical” (Sarah Manguso, author of 300 Arguments)

A charismatic social media presence and copywriter by trade, thxthxthx author Leah Dieterich (based in Portland, OR with strong ties to Los Angeles and New York, and to the fine art scene on both coasts) will be an effective and creative co-promoter of her own work

«How do you make room, in a marriage, for the feelings and compulsions that exceed your expectations of one-true-love? Can 'openness' be the key that frees couples who feel locked in wedlock? Vanishing Twins explores these and many other questions in propulsive epigrammatic style. Leah Dieterich makes the history of her relationships (with lovers, family, and with herself), her hopes, dreams, and desires, come alive, and she does this without wasting any words.» —John Francisconi, Bank Square Books (Mystic CT)

«This is a very cool book—a story we don't often hear, about how people change, or change together, over time, and all the different types of relationships that become important to us. Leah Dieterich combines her dance background, fascination with twins, and the story of her marriage in a unique, fascinating way that kept me turning pages very quickly.» —Abby Fennewald, BookPeople (Austin TX)