** A Granta Book of the Year 2023 **
‘Raises the stakes for the rest of us writers’ ISABEL WAIDNER
‘An important new talent’ FIONA SHAW
‘Curious, queer, whip-smart, hilarious and tender’ GAIL MCCONNELL
A living exploration of undoing and redoing queer single parenting and love, in conversation with an AI algorithm and a toddler.
As Hannah Silva navigates friendship, dating and life as a queer single parent in London, her toddler and the algorithm contribute humour, play and insight. With the help/disruption of these unreliable narrators, Hannah deconstructs her story, and constructs a new one. She unravels everything she has been taught to want, finding alternative ways of thinking, loving and parenting today.
Queer, creative, sexy and compassionate, My Child, the Algorithm is non-fiction at its finest.
‘My Child, the Algorithm redoes what autobiography is. Funny, inventive and moving, it raises the stakes for the rest of us writers‘ – Isabel Waidner, author of STERLING KARAT GOLD
‘Hannah breaks all the rules in order to refresh our minds. No writer I know in drama is as brave or as vulnerable. She talks to another hinterland of the mind. She writes like she is climbing a mountain naked…. an important new talent‘ – Fiona Shaw
‘Curious, queer, whip-smart, hilarious and tender. Just read it. Hannah Silva is my favourite male seahorse’ – Gail McConnell
‘A bold and inventive meditation on the complexities of motherhood. I loved it‘ – Irenosen Okojie, author of NUDIBRANCH
‘A work worthy to stand beside classics of queer parenting by Maggie Nelson and Gail McConnell, Silva’s book asks all the right questions about art, family and love, with clarity, invention and passion‘ – Joanna Walsh, author of GIRL ONLINE: A USER MANUAL
‘My Child, the Algorithm is extraordinary, in both its subject matter and in the purpose and power of its prose. This is writing from life’s bleeding edge, driven by curiosity, by pain, and at times by howling need. There’s light here, too; playfulness, humour, and so much love. Just as children remake their mothers, so this book seems, at times, to remake language itself. I adored it‘ – Marianne Levy
‘Hannah Silva’s writing is searing, sharp, moving, and alive to the inanities and absurdities of her worlds. With a poet’s ear and a truly poetic eye and playwright’s feel for all life’s dramas her talent is one to treasure and audio drama’s rarest of pleasures’ – David Eldridge, dramatist and screenwriter
‘Hannah Silva lets bodies and rooms be the waxing and waning things of space and line they also are, instead of manoeuvrable substance. How beautiful – this is amazing work‘ – Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo
‘A brilliant, surprising, funny, moving, unexpected, unique work of genius‘ – Nadia Molinari
‘Fresh, strange, moving and thought-expanding. I was completely taken with it… It reminded me why I like to read – to make more seem possible’ – Liz Berry
Hannah Silva is a writer and performer working in sound poetry, radio, and experimental non-fiction. Her record ‘Talk in a bit’ was included in the Wire‘s Top 25 Albums of 2018. She has written eight plays for BBC Radio 3 and 4, and won the Tinniswood Award for best script and numerous placements in the BBC Audio Drama Awards. Her debut poetry collection Forms of Protest was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. She has an MFA in Theatre Practice and a PhD on poetry in performance from Stirling University. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career fellow at Queen Mary University, London. Her play for BBC Radio 4 ‘An Artificially Intelligent Guide to Love’ starred Fiona Shaw and was the starting point for My Child, the Algorithm. She lives in London with her child.
