Willy Thorn is a communications expert & artistic renaissance man. He is a journalist & copywriter, teacher, author & artist.
He has lived many places, beginning with Milwaukee & Rome & Minnesota & central Wisconsin. Among his other homes are Washington DC & Baltimore, Chicago & the Twin Cities, St. Francis South Dakota, the Bay Area & Shanghai. He currently lives & works in Bangkok.
Thorn has a Masters Degree in Journalism & has spent time as a Capitol Hill reporter & wire editor, sports writer, political columnist & arts critic. Other media endeavors include public relations campaigns, magazine feature writing, ghostwritten biographies & time on the radio – as a DJ & on-air host, play-by-play sports announcer & music promoter.
He has spent nearly a decade as a language specialist for Craft Worldwide & as a copywriter & creative for McCann Worldgroup. He currently works as senior copywriter at Quo Global branding agency in Bangkok.
He has won awards at Cannes Lions & been recognized for sports writing & political columns, magazine features, theatre scripts, religious publications & photography.
Thorn is also a photographer & classical oil painter, trained thru the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC. His artistic c.v. includes photography gallery shows; sculpting in Mamallapuram, India; concrete statuary at Wat Xieng Mouane, in Luang Prabang, Laos; and flower petal mosaics in Cagli, Italy.
He is a Buddhist meditation instructor; trained thru Thailand’s renowned Willpower Institute. And he was even the rare foreigner to complete the entire six month course in spoken & written Thai. He currently sits as an advisor on the institute’s English Foreign Language subcommittee – where he translates books, helps develop outreach programs & occasionally lectures.
He proudly notes a Master’s Degree from Marquette University & books in both Washington's Library of Congress & the Vatican Archives in Rome.
His catalog is varied & he has written extensively about a number of subjects — including sports, politics, religion, Buddhist philosophy & Asian history & art. One of his largest endeavors was documenting & cataloguing several hundred temples in Bangkok, Ayutthaya, Yangon, Vientiane & Kuala Lumpur.
His catalog is available thru the following distributors: Amazon // Apple iBooks // Android Aldiko // Barnes & Noble // Sony // & Smashwords.
His Milwaukee-centric column of sports poetry & prose — Run of tha Mil — can be found at Milticket.blogspot.com
