Susan Sink, the author of The Art of The Saint John’s Bible: A Complete Reader’s Guide, among other works, passed away in August 2024 after years of living with ovarian cancer. Sink’s work touched many lives across the world, and especially those in the Saint Benedict and Saint John’s community in Collegeville and St. Joseph, Minnesota, where she lived.
When The Saint John’s Bible manuscript was completed in 2011, leadership sought an author to write an interpretive guide to accompany the work. According to Fr. Michael Patella, monk and Professor Emeritus at Saint John’s University and Abbey and chair of the Committee of Illumination and Text (CIT) for The Saint John’s Bible, it was clear from the beginning that Sink should be the author behind this supplementary text.
The assignment was originally to write a book about the process of creating The Saint John’s Bible. However, Sink found herself inspired and yearning to analyze the Bible’s artwork and offer a guide to the motifs that appear throughout the text, while providing context as to how and why those artistic decisions were made by the CIT. In the end, that is what the book became.
“Susan saw the enormous contribution, creativity and symbolism that was behind The Saint John’s Bible,” said Hans Christoffersen, editorial director of Liturgical Press, the publication house behind The Art of The Saint John’s Bible. “She was very interested and informed about the work of all the artists and calligraphers, which made her a wonderful candidate for writing this book. It is just phenomenal, her ability to see and read the illuminations.”
In particular, Christoffersen points to Sink’s investigation of the Garden of Desire illumination, which clearly demonstrates her genius. Sink’s profound analyses of the illuminations from The Saint John’s Bible have served as a source of inspiration for many as they delve into the work of sacred art and Scripture, and it’s not her only work that has ignited inspiration in others. Sink published a variety of writings throughout her life, including the novel Officer Down, and many books of poetry. Sink also regularly published short essays, poems, and works of fiction on her blog.
If you delve into the dunes of Sink’s writing, you’ll find there is hardly a subject or medium gone unexplored. Sink embraced the nuances of authenticity, beauty, aging, time, outsider-ness, mortality, change, exploitation, justice and more in prose, poetry, and essays. It is evident from the writing published on her blog that she collected her writing and thoughts in conversation with those of other poets, such as friends at an intimate dinner. She referenced Lucille Clifton, Sylvia Plath, and others in her work.
Habits
Though she was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and lived in many cities throughout her life (including Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; New York City, New York, where she achieved an MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College; and Palo Alto, California, where she completed the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford) Sink lived in Minnesota from 2005 to the end of her life. In 2008, she moved to 80 acres of prairie land in St. Joseph, Minnesota with her husband Steven Heymans. The plot of land she lived on had previously been the hog farm of the Sisters of the Order of Saint Benedict.
Sink was intertwined in the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University community in many ways, especially in her role as an Oblate of Saint Benedict’s Monastery. Her writing underscores how inspired she was by the Sisters; both by the intricacy of each individual Sister and the strength, wisdom and warmth of the collective. Sink’s love for the Sisters is especially evident in her poem series, Habits, a collection of 100-word stories based on oral history accounts in the Sisters’ archive. The Sisters loved her right back.
Brown Winter
Those who live in the Midwestern United States know that 2024 brought with it an uncharacteristically warm winter. Sink reflects on this unusual winter in the months leading up to her passing in Brown Winter, one of her last blog posts (dated March 7, 2024) published to Medium. She writes:
“Brown winter is coming to an end, so let us all,
whenever death comes, not unpack our black clothes.
Be it spring, or even summer, let our imagination
move with the seasons’ beauty and the promise
of life everlasting, prepared to enter however it comes.”
In Memorium
Susan Sink’s writing lives on. To find her work, visit her blog here or click here to purchase print copies of her writing.