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.
About the performers:
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.
Hasti is an award-winning poet and writer, who also works at The Common Press. Hasti is an alumna of the Southbank New Poets Collective and a member of the Ledbury Poetry Critics, they are the recipient of the 2022 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Poetry and have recently published poems in BATHMAGG, ZINDABAD ZINE, and THE WILLOWHERB REVIEW. They have also co-written the short sci-fi film DIGGING, produced by Film4. Hasti has created shows for Montez Press Radio and hosts open mic and poetry night Fresh Lip.
So Mayer is a writer, indie bookseller, film curator, and pencil stan. Their most recent books are A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula, 2020), a short essay on queer art, censorship and resistance, and <jacked a kaddish> (Litmus, 2018), a poetry sequence about interwar masculinity, technology and hats, and their BFI Film Classics on Orlando is forthcoming. Their work across genres and forms has been published internationally, including in Roxane Gay's anthology Not that Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, in several Criterion DVDs, and in Ignota Press's Spells: 21st Century Occult Poetry. Plus their poetry once appeared on hoardings in Dublin. With Adam Zmith, they collaborated on Unreal Sex for Cipher, an anthology of queer SFFH, and on the BBC Sounds podcast The Film We Can't See, a tour through queer film history.
Doors open from 6:30pm
Entrance via The Common Press
Please note the space the event is taking place is fully wheelchair accessible.
This is a BYOB event, there will be lots of non-alcoholic drinks, soft drinks, and hot drinks available throughout the evening.
There are a limited number of free tickets available for this event - if these have sold out and you cannot afford the minimum pay-what-you-can ticket type, please email us at books@commonpress.co.uk and we will add you to the guest list, no questions asked.