Heather Corinna: Founder, Editor & Designer

Heather is an activist, writer, artist, educator, and 'net 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 and beyond since 1997.

In 2007, DaCapo released S.E.X.:the All-You-Need-to-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College, a comprehensive and fully gender, orientation and age-inclusive young adult sexuality guide. Heather is also an abortion and birth control educator and counselor for the Cedar River Clinics/Feminist Women's Health Center, and the new director of their CONNECT teen sexual health outreach and education program. She is a sexuality consultant for the health department of orb28/ New Moon Girl Media, and her young adults sexuality advice at Scarleteen is now syndicated weekly at the reproductive health hub RH Reality Check.

Her work at Scarleteen and in sexuality education and activism have hailed acclaim or attention from numerous publications, including The Utne Reader, The City Pages, Alternet, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Siren, The Industry Standard, The Chicago Tribune, CNN, The Chicago Tribune's RedEye, The Nation, The Minnesota Women's Press, The Boston Phoenix, The New York Times, HipMama, Bust, Bitch, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 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 the keynote speaker and artist guest of honor at the 2003 BECAUSE conference addressing bisexuality and erotic creativity. In 2007, she was the winner of The Champions of Sexual Literacy Award for Grassroots Activism from the National Sexuality Resource Center/SFSU.

Heather Corinna was also a lead plaintiff in the ACLU vs. Gonzales case, arguing against the Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which could have removed young adults' access to needed sexuality information, and her work with Scarleteen -- and the import of our service -- helped secure an important win for the case.

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 anthologies Breakthrough Bleeding: Essays on The Thing Women Spend A Quarter Of Their Time Doing, But No One’s Supposed To Talk About, Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape and What We Think: Gender Roles, Women's Issues and Feminism in the 21st Century. Her photography and visual art have 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.

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 living 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 Corinna is in her late thirties and lives and works in Seattle, Washington with her incredible partner, an old scrappy cat and her trusty pug sidekick, Sofia.

Sexpert Advice Contributors

David was a peer counselor as a teen for a community-based sex information and referral hotline. For most of the last ten years he has been an active forum participant on issues relating to pregnancy, parenting, and human sexuality. In addition, for the last two years he has rabidly blogged about issues related to adult sexuality. He's a stay-at-home/work-at-home father of two younger children in Seattle, Washington.

Hollie is an OB/GYN Registered Nurse from Ontario. Hollie has been answering questions here at Scarleteen since she was a young'un in late 2000. When she's not working or volunteering for ST, she can usually be found relaxing at home with her husband and four cats.

James is a designer living in Seattle, Washington with the cutest dog in the world. He's been openly gay for close to 20 years - he is the author of The Making of a Homo featured here in Gaydar - and the realization of his age is giving him pause to reconsider the vegan mint icing he's been eating out of the bowl. When he's not eating vegan mint icing straight out of the bowl, he enjoys making blanket statements that cause his boyfriend's eyes to roll.

Lauren is an on-and-off student with a particular interest in women's health and anatomy. She stumbled upon Scarleteen in 2005, instantly drawn to the site's sex-positive, accurate, inclusive atmosphere and becoming a regular contributing member. She's volunteered for the message boards over a year and has authored and co-authored several pieces, including articles and blogs. Her current major is registered nursing, and Lauren hopes to specialize in either OB/GYN or palliative care. In her spare time (when NOT being a women's health aficionado) she enjoys geeking it up on her Linux box, gaming, going to the gym, and hanging with her friends and lovely sister, brother in law, and baby niece.

Paul is a research psychoanalyst, which means he went to school for way too long. He is on the editorial board of the American Journal of Sexuality Education. Paul is also the cow superintendant at his county fair. He lives on a remote bay in the beautiful Northwest with his wife, daughter, dogs and small herd of livestock. Paul is the author of Guide To Getting It On!, which is now in its 5th edition.

Sarah is a doctoral student at a southern university studying communication. Her work in a variety of health care settings sparked Sarah's research interests, which include patient/provider communication and social support. She first began posting at Scarleteen in 2000, and is one of the longest-tenured volunteers at Scarleteen. In her spare time, Sarah enjoys knitting (though not very skillfully), cooking, and reading.

Sarah M. has been writing and talking publicly about women's bodies and sexualities since 2000, when she started her website All About My Vagina. She spends a lot of time making websites and communing with the internet, supporting local music and art, knitting things, organizing community sex education events, not driving a car, being self-employed, playing with her friends, hanging with her gramma, growing plants, and being in love with her special man, all generally while talking about genitals with anyone who is curious (i.e., most people). She lives in sunny Victoria, BC, Canada.

Susie is an epidemiologist specializing in infectious diseases and has been working in public health for the past two years. She earned her master's degree in public health from USC Keck School of Medicine in 2004, where she wrote her thesis on STD health education. She earned her bachelor's degree in 2002 from UC Berkeley, having studied molecular cell biology and Southeast Asian studies. Susie stumbled on Scarleteen in July 2000 and discovered she had a knack for talking about sexual physiology. When she's not at her computer, Susie is either rocking out at a concert, pumping iron at the gym or stuck in traffic. That's because she is trapped in suburban Los Angeles, CA.

Other Contributors

Other authors and educators who have generously contributed content to Scarleteen include Hanne Blank, Kate Storm, Audra Williams, James Elliott, Emira Mears, Ophira Edut, Caro Buccheim, Malcolm Gin, Janel Hamner, Clare Sainsbury, M. Christian, Kythryne Aisling, Laurel Martinez, and Josh Cuppage.

Credits

A huge shout-out to the magnificent Garrett Coakley, developer extraordinaire and dear friend, for his help with the most recent version of Scarleteen, which was a Herculean task. The current version of Scarleteen is fueled by the open source platform Drupal. As well, the primary licensed fonts used in the design are the beautiful work of Diane DiPiazza at DincType, the Canada Type Font Foundry, and and the Flat-It type foundry.