Program Type:
Special ProgrammingAge Group:
Adults- Registration is required for this event.
- Registration will close on April 8, 2026 @ 6:00pm.
Program Description
Event Details
ABOUT THE EVENT
Author Talk with Michael Thornhill on April 8th from 6:00-7:00 PM.
Book: The First, The Few and The Only by Michael Thornhill
BOOK DESCRIPTION
With layered examples, cultural breadcrumbs, and real-world links that refuse to let folks look away, Michael Thornhill says the quiet part out loud. That’s his magic. It’s what makes The First, The Few, The Only – unignorable.
This first book of a trilogy was written for those navigating predominantly white institutions as the “only one”—the only melanated face and voice in the boardroom, the few Brown kids in the gifted class, the first with your shade of sugar in the room, the first generation to “make it out” but still feel ostracized despite your best efforts. It speaks to the lived experience of survival, the quiet violence of tokenism, and the hidden costs of proximity to ‘power’. It explores what happens to our bodies, our spirits, and our sense of self when we're asked to perform, assimilate, or represent entire communities... alone.
His voice is powerful. You’ve read a lot of voices, and Michael is the rare kind that tells the truth in such a way that people can actually hear it. He doesn’t skirt around discomfort— but he also does not abandon the reader in shame.
He takes you through it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Thornhill M.A. is an AfroCuban author, consultant, and recovering DEI practitioner whose work powerfully excavates the layered realities of race, erasure, tokenism, and mixed identity in North America. Adopted and raised in Coral Springs, Florida—and later coming of age in New Castle, Pennsylvania—Michael brings a deeply personal lens to his critique of systems that demand performance while erasing personhood.
As a neurodivergent thinker and somatic strategist, he approaches both writing and consulting with a unique blend of pattern recognition, anthropological clarity, and trauma-informed precision. His voice is as incisive as it is human—cutting through platitudes with bold truth-telling, yet always rooted in the dignity & complexity of lived experience.
Through books, workshops, and public dialogue, this indie-author offers language for what so many have lived but never named. Whether on the page or in the room, he creates space for those brave enough to be heard—to feel seen, called in, and called into community.
His work is not just read—it is felt.
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