Events

On the radio...

BBC Radio 3, Free Thinking

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Radio 3’s arts and ideas programme discusses parenthood and the history of childbirth with Testament, Hannah Silva, Jessica Cox, author of Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain, and by Dr Laura Sellers, curator at the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds. Hosted by John Gallagher.

BBC Radio 3, The Verb

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Ian McMillan hosts a special performance edition of The Verb recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC’s Contains Strong Language Festival in Leeds. Featuring poetry from Hannah Silva, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Malika Booker, Cecilia Knapp and Testament.

Upcoming Events

Experimental Lit Festival, Athens, Greece

25th - 26th November 2023

Eight, Critical Institute for Art and Politics

Performing from My Child, the Algorithm (more tba)

FutureBook Conference, London

27th November 2023

Creative Case study: My Child, the Algorithm

This summer, Hannah Silva published My Child, the Algorithm: a memoir of queer single parenting told through conversations between the author, her toddler and a predecessor of Chat-GPT. In this in-depth session Silva, computational linguist James Carney and Sujoy Roy from Footnote Press discuss the surprises, joys and challenges of writing in collaboration with AI, before opening the discussion to the audience to explore reader attitudes, author anxieties, and other potential creative opportunities that generative AI offers.

Past Events

Adventures in Neurodiverse Writing with Hannah Silva and Debris Stevenson, guest reader Shola von Reinhold

12th - 17th June 2023: Moniak Mhor, Scotland

We will joyfully dance in the tangents of our minds, curl up on beanbags in the corners of our thoughts, throw words into the air and let them land on the page in patterns unique to our selves. You will be guided and supported to find the stories and ways of telling them born from your personal modes of thinking and living. This course celebrates open-minded, and weird-minded thinkers and writers. Bring a work in progress, a kernel of an idea, or a spark of curiosity and an enthusiasm for language.

Primadonna Festival, Suffolk

28th - 30th July 2023

Wilderness Festival, Oxfordshire

3rd - 6th August 2023

Calling Calling: Maggie Nicols, Hannah Silva, Jo Hellier

Friday 1st September 2023: 8pm, The Cube, Bristol

Performance from My Child, the Algorithm.

An evening of experimental expanded vocal performances as part of Brunswick Club’s current Calling Calling project.

Calling Calling is a gathering of voices, with a programme that explores collaborative vocal ecologies through non-traditional voice and expanded vocal techniques.

BBC Contains Strong Language Festival, Leeds

21st - 24th September 2023

One of the BBC core writers, performing across the weekend.

Contains Strong Language is the BBC’s flagship poetry and spoken word festival which is taking place in Leeds from Thursday 21st – Sunday 24th September 2023.

National Poetry Library at 70 Celebration, London

29th October 2023

London Literature Festival - Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, 7pm

Performing from My Child, the Algorithm, on a lineup with Roger McGough and Brian Pattern.

Gender Equity in AI, the AI Fringe

2nd November 2023, 10am - 12pm

Venue TBA, London

It is vital to address the gender disparities and exclusions that persist within the field of AI, acknowledging the critical role that gender diversity plays in ensuring the responsible design, development, implementation and use of AI. We must move beyond potential and rhetoric, and take further tangible and transformative action towards gender equity in AI. This event brings together EDI experts, artists, industry innovators and gender advocates to share their experience and to propose provocations to spark discussion. Participants will have an opportunity to engage in group discussions surrounding these provocations and to explore concrete actions we can foster and support within the Responsible AI UK ecosystem.

Queering Parenthood: Kirsty Logan and Hannah Silva In Conversation, London

2nd November 2023

Common Press Bookshop, 118 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 6DG, 7pm

Hannah Silva (My Child, the Algorithm) and Kirsty Logan (The Unfamiliar) discuss their books and queer single parenting, in conversation with Jess Rose

Feel the algorithm, London

9th November 2023

Common Press Bookshop, 118 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 6DG, 7pm

Writers and performers Hannah Silva, Hasti, and So Mayer will read from and explore their current projects to ask some neuroqueer questions:

Can AI make a new you? What’s sexy about looping (time or data processes)? How do we write the singularity, plurally? Come and be part of the process.

New Intimacies, Edinburgh

11th November 2023

Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9SU, 12.30 - 1.30pm

Hannah Silva (My Child, the Algorithm), Sophie K Rosa (Radical Intimacy) and Sijaiymah Mansoor Khan (Seeing for Ourselves) discuss closeness and authenticity beyond restrictive models, at a time when we need collective liberation.

All Borders Blur, London

11th - 12th November 2023

Conference on Spoken Word poetry, Queen Mary University of London

Talk/performance from My Child, the Algorithm on 12th Nov.