** 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. 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. A book about love, loss and queer single parenting co-written with a machine-learning algorithm and a toddler. Developed from Hannah Silva's BBC Radio 4 play 'An Artificially Intelligent Guide to Love'. First broadcast in February 2022, the play starred Fiona Shaw and is still available on the BBC website. A queer single mum collaborates with a machine-learning algorithm and a toddler as she struggles in the aftermath of being left by her partner, her child's biological mother, during the pandemic. For readers of Motherhood by Sheila Heti, The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson, 12 Bytes by Jeanette Winterson, and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. An experimental memoir which blends the voices of author, child and AI, as together they explore love, loss and queer parenting. My Child, the Algorithm redoes what autobiography is. Funny, inventive and moving, it raises the stakes for the rest of us writers 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 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 A brilliant, surprising, funny, moving, unexpected, unique work of genius
