Teaching & Coaching

For the past decade, Samantha Thornhill has taught poetry & performance to first year actors at The Juilliard School. She’s also taught at Medgar Evers College, Urban Word NYC & Bronx Academy of Letters, where she served as writer in residence to middle and high school students for five years. Poets & Writers Inc. regularly sponsors Samantha to teach senior citizen and inter-generational writing workshops. Additionally, she’s a facilitator for the Dialogue Arts Project, which uses creative writing and story telling as an entry point into critical discourse around social identity.

Samantha has the unique capacity to hold a safe container for a wide range of people of different ages, races backgrounds to come together to form a creative sharing community. Samantha also provides the opportunity through skillful exercises for participants to open to one another on a rare level of self-examination and transparency. Her extensive experience with facilitating writing and performance workshops for groups in urban and rural schools, universities, prisons and community centers, as well as corporate and non-profit spaces, makes her an indispensable educator.

Additionally, Samantha serves as a writing coach for individuals who have their own personal writing aspirations. Whether the goal is to finish an extensive writing project, or to simply get conditioned to generate new work on a regular basis, between writing exercises, milestones and Skype sessions, Samantha tailors her individual courses to fit the unique needs of her clients. Under Samantha’s guidance and care, even less experienced writers will watch their written words bloom beneath their fingertips.  

Here’s what some of Samantha’s students are saying:

I joined Samantha’s workshop knowing very little about poetry. Her three-month class not only taught me the fundamentals, it excited me to the genre-breaking possibilities of persona poetry and allowed me to join an incredibly diverse and vibrant community of writers. I feel more informed not only as a writer, but as a world citizen as a result of what I have learned.

– Joanne Yao, Participant -

Ms. Thornhill modeled respect and encouragement, never failing to honor the points we made during our analysis by responding with genuine reflections. Her unforgettable warm care in guiding us in reading and writing poems as well as her infectious joy as we shared in dissecting poems and celebrating their internal workings really made the workshop golden.

– Charleen McClure, Participant -