Students Delve into the Topic of Belonging with Award-Winning Author Safia Elhillo

Millbrook is structured around the belief that every student should be known and needed, regardless of where they originated and how they arrived here. Apropos of that, the first Friday Forum of the 2024-2025 school year featured poet and author Safia Elhillo, whose work deals with themes of belonging and self-identity.

Ms. Elhillo, winner of an Arab American Book Award, the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, and a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor, spent the entire day with the Millbrook student body. She first attended morning assembly before heading off to lead a class with IVth and Vth form Honors English students. The class gave students the unique opportunity to discuss their summer reading, Ms. Elhillo’s novel in verse Home Is not a Country, directly with the author.

Sitting at a table surrounded by students, Ms. Elhillo started with a brief reading of her work and then spent the rest of the class answering questions. Students offered insightful queries on everything from literary themes and illustration color usage to what circumstances led her to become a writer.

In the afternoon, Ms. Elhillo hosted a poetry workshop for interested Millbrook wordsmiths, and then the entire community came together in the Chelsea Morrison Theater for the first Friday Forum of the semester. Following brief introductions from Head of School Jonathan Downs ’98, English Instructor Kathy Havard, and Marvelous Aderibigbe ’26, Ms. Elhillo performed a hybrid poetry reading and biographical talk.

Merging lyrics and prose into an imagery-filled origin story, she colorfully described her liminal experience as someone who was born in the U.S. to itinerant Sudanese immigrants and spent much of her childhood growing up in various countries.

“I grew up in an invented world, among the people who invented it with their own hands,” she explained, “so I grew up believing anything could be made real.”

Ms. Elhillo’s story surely inspired students to dive deeply into their own passions to make the futures that they dream of into realities.