Name

Heather

Age

37

Country

US/Seattle, Washington

Biography

Heather Corinna -- the founder, designer, editor and glorified janitor at Scarleteen -- is a queer, feminist activist, writer, photographer, artist, educator, and Internet publisher and community organizer in her mid-thirties. She has been considered a pioneer of both online women's and young adult sexuality, having brought inclusive, informative, feminist, original, creative and radical sexuality content to the web since 1997.

Her essays, fiction, poetry and artwork have appeared in her own publications as well as in Issues Magazine, PIF Magazine, Maxi Magazine, CleanSheets, LeisureSuit.Net, Other Rooms, Cherrybomb, Sexilicious, Blood Moon, BAACHOR Magazine (in which her essay "The Door Into One Moment, Eternal," was nominated for a Pushcart Prize) and Batteries Not Included. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have also appeared in the anthologies Viscera, The Adventures of Food, Aqua Erotica, Zaftig: Well-Rounded Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 1 & 2, Shameless: An Intimate Erotica and Penthouse, and will appear in the forthcoming anthologyBreakthrough Bleeding: Essays on The Thing Women Spend A Quarter Of Their Time Doing, But No One’s Supposed To Talk About. Her photography and art has been shown at/in 555 Gallery, Sex Worker Visions (New York), Babes in Toyland, Jane's Guide, Michelle 7, On Our Backs, the Bryant-Lake Bowl, Trixx (to benefit the GLBT youth center, District 202), The Independent, The Mammoth Book of Erotic Women, SEAF 2004 and other venues. She has been quoted in other sexuality books, such as The Whole Lesbian Sex Book and The Mother's Guide to Sex, and her work has been used in a number of university curricula.

In spring of 2007, Marlowe & Company, an imprint of the Avalon Publishing Group, released S.E.X.:the All-You-Need-to-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to get You Through High School and College, an in-depth, comprehensive and fully inclusive young adult sexuality guide authored by Heather Corinna.

Her work at Scarleteen and her other websites have hailed acclaim from numerous publications, including The Utne Reader, The City Pages, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Siren, The Industry Standard, The Chicago Tribune, RedEye, The Boston Phoenix, HipMama, Bust, the Oxygen Network, Estronet, Yahoo!, Lavender Magazine, and The Woman's Guide to Sex on the Web. She was an honored speaker in 1999 for the Illinois Library Association, on the topic of freedom of speech and sexuality, a lead speaker at the 2001 Webzine conference addressing independent media publishing, and a keynote speaker and artist guest of honor at the 2003 BECAUSE conference addressing bisexuality and erotic creativity, and is regularly invited to speak at internet marketing conventions on the subject of women's sexuality and sex education. Heather Corinna was also a lead plaintiff in the ACLU vs. Gonzales case, arguing against the implentation of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which could remove young adults' access to needed sexuality information, and helped secure an important win for the case.

Heather was previously a classroom educator, and has taught in the Montessori method, as well as running an independent alternative Kindergarten and pre-Kindergarten for four years in her early twenties. A graduate with honors of Chicago's Academy for the Arts, where she studied music and creative writing, she won a National Academy of Poets award before she was eighteen. She continued her education at Shimer College, studying English Literature, Erotic Spirituality and Sociology. A certified Jill of All Trades, she has had a myriad of occupations, including selling wheatgrass and sprouts in Chicago's Farmer's Markets, designing centerpieces for Hotel Nikko, waiting tables, ringing cash registers, teaching kickboxing and self-defense, landscaping, consulting on women's issues, political canvassing and once donned a lobster suit on a subway car for a promotional campaign.

Heather lives and works in Seattle, Washington with her incredible partner, an old scrappy cat and her trusty pug sidekick, Sofia.