Fruit Fly

Josh Silver came to fiction by an unconventional route, training and working as an actor before turning to writing in his late twenties. A graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, he spent several years in British television and stage work before enrolling in the Faber Academy’s “Writing a Novel” course under novelist Richard Skinner. He has credited this experience as the decisive turn in his professional life. That course produced the manuscript that became his debut, HappyHead (2023), a dystopian young-adult thriller set in a remote wellness facility where teenagers are conditioned into state-mandated contentment. The novel was widely reviewed in the British trade press; was longlisted for the Branford Boase Award, which recognizes an outstanding debut novel for young readers; and was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize 2024, one of the UK’s most closely watched prizes for young-adult fiction. It also appeared on the Waterstones “Best Books of 2023: Younger Readers” selection and was named a Guardian children’s book of the month.

Silver followed HappyHead with its sequel, Blackout (2024), which continues the story of protagonist Seb and consolidated Silver’s reputation as a distinctive voice in British young-adult speculative fiction. The two novels together established him as a writer preoccupied with institutional coercion, LGBTQ+ adolescent interiority, and the aestheticized surfaces beneath which violence festers. He would later carry this thematic terrain into his first novel for adults.

Silver’s adult debut, published by Penguin Michael Joseph in the UK and by Zando in the US, marked a significant expansion of Silver’s range and secured him representation by Chloe Seager at the Madeleine Milburn Literary Agency, one of the leading UK agencies for commercial and book-club fiction. Foreign rights were sold in multiple territories ahead of publication, and the novel was selected as a lead title in Penguin Michael Joseph’s autumn list. Silver has also contributed short nonfiction and personal essays to outlets including Attitude and The Bookseller, in which he has discussed his transition from performer to novelist and his working practice of drafting longhand before revising on screen. Based in London, Silver combines his writing with occasional teaching for the Faber Academy and mentorship work for emerging writers through the Word Factory and Spread the Word development programs.