After graduating from Harvard, Louisa Hall played squash professionally while working in a research lab at the Albert Einstein Hospital. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Texas, where she currently teaches literature and creative writing, and supervises a poetry workshop at the Austin State Psychiatric Hospital. She is the author of the novel The Carriage House and her poems have been published in the New Republic, Southwest Review, Ellipsis and other journals.
A thumping good read. Every time I sit down with it, it makes me happy all over again -- Joe Hill, author of HORNS Reads like a hybrid of David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood . . . a brilliant novel -- Philipp Meyer, author of THE SON Comes out of nowhere and hits like a thunderbolt. It's not just one of the smartest books of the year, it's one of the most beautiful ones, and it almost seems like an understatement to call it a masterpiece. * NPR * Beautifully illustrates the human longing at the heart of our obsession with technology . . . a hypnotic read * Guardian * SPEAK is that rarest of finds: a novel that doesn't remind me of any other book I've ever read. A complex, nuanced, and beautifully written meditation on language, immortality, the nature of memory, the ethical problems of artificial intelligence, and what it means to be human. -- Emily St. John Mandel, author of STATION ELEVEN