The Short Version.

Rev. Dr. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson has written, edited, and contributed to numerous books of both theology and fiction and has published hundreds of articles. She hosts the podcast Queen of the Sciences, writes the e-newsletter Theology & a Recipe and the substack Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories, and is the Founder of Thornbush Press.

The Long Version.

Sarah Hinlicky Wilson is the Founder of Thornbush Press, launched in 2020, and author of a number of books under its imprint: I Am a Brave Bridge, Sermon on the Mount: A Poetic Paraphrase, Small Catechism: Memorizing Edition, Pearly Gates: Parables from the Final Threshold, To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy, A-Tumblin’ Down, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration, and Forty Facets of the Ascension.

From the summer of 2018 to the spring of 2025 Sarah lived in Mitaka, Japan, on the campus of Japan Lutheran College and Theological Seminary, where her husband Andrew L. Wilson served as Professor of Church History. Sarah served as Associate Pastor at Tokyo Lutheran Church near the Shin-Ōkubo station in central Tokyo. During her time in Tokyo she began and continues on as an Affiliated Faculty Member at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala, Sweden.

From July 2016 to July 2018 Sarah and her family lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, getting reacquainted with their home territory in between international sojourns. During that period she wrote a memoir about her year spent in the fledgling Republic of Slovakia.

From 2008 to 2016 the Wilsons lived in Strasbourg, France, where Sarah worked at the Institute for Ecumenical Research, a close affiliate of the Lutheran World Federation, specializing in Eastern Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism. Sarah continued to serve as a Visiting Professor of the Institute and Consultant to the International Lutheran-Pentecostal Dialogue from 2016 to 2024. With her colleague Theodor Dieter from the Institute, Sarah taught a two-week course in Wittenberg, Germany, on Martin Luther’s theology every November for 15 years (2009–2024).

In 2010, Sarah and Andrew followed the footsteps of Martin Luther’s pilgrimage from Germany to Rome five hundred (or maybe four hundred ninety-nine) years earlier.

Sarah earned a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology in 2008 and an M.Div. in 2003 at Princeton Theological Seminary. During that time, Sarah and Andrew got married and became parents to Zeke. She served as pastor at a Slovak-American church in Trenton, New Jersey, and became the editor of Lutheran Forum, an independent theological quarterly, which she continued to edit until the end of 2018. All of her articles from that period are available here.

Before graduate school Sarah spent one year working at First Things, where she first started publishing theological essays. Since her first in October 1998, Sarah has published hundreds of articles in popular venues like Christianity Today, The Christian Century, and Books & Culture, as well as scholarly journals like Pro Ecclesia, Pneuma, Lutheran Quarterly, and Concordia Journal. She has edited four books and contributed to a few more.

Sarah earned a B.A. in Theology and Philosophy from Lenoir-Rhyne College (which has since upgraded to Lenoir-Rhyne University).

Between high school and college Sarah spent the aforementioned year living in Slovakia with her parents and brother, where she learned to chatter in Slovak about food, piety, and boys.

Sarah did her growing up in New York and New Jersey and still thinks of herself as a New Yorker, even though she hasn’t lived there since the last millennium.