Bio

Version 7

Heather (they/them) is a dedicated queer feminist activist, author, educator, artist, teacher, organizer and innovator who grows big things from small seeds and works to create, cultivate and support positive growth and change. (Yes, sometimes even when it just looks like complaining. Sometimes it is just complaining.)

Heather is the founder, director, designer and editor of the web clearinghouse and organization Scarleteen, the first truly comprehensive sex, sexuality and relationships education site and resource for young people of its kind. Heather and the rest of the team at Scarleteen has provided millions of young people accurate and inclusive information and support every year for the last 20 + years.

Heather’s also the author of the inclusive, comprehensive and progressive sex, sexual health and relationships book for young adults, S.E.X: The All-You-Need-To-Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties (DaCapo Press, 2007, 2016), now in its second edition; with Isabella Rotman, Wait, What?: A Comic Book Guide to Relationships, Bodies, and Growing Up (Oni Press, September 2019), for older middle readers and younger teens, and the new, and highly inclusive menopause memoir-slash-survival guide What Fresh Hell Is This? Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities and You (Hachette Go!, 2021).

They’ve been a sexuality, contraception and abortion educator and counselor for the Cedar River Clinics/Feminist Women’s Health Center, and the director of the CONNECT teen outreach and education program in Seattle which primarily served transient/homeless youth and reproductive health patients. They’re a previous member of the editorial board for the American Journal of Sexuality Education and the Board of Directors for NARAL Pro-Choice Washington; a writer and contributing editor for the 2011 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and their sexuality advice column was previously syndicated at RH Reality Check/Rewire. They were 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.

Heather has won several awards in their field, and their work has hailed acclaim or mentions from many publications, including The Utne Reader, The City Pages, Alternet, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Siren, The Industry Standard, The Chicago Tribune, CNN, The Nation, the Oxygen Network, Estronet, Yahoo!, Feministing, The Minnesota Women’s Press, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, The Boston Phoenix, Ms. Magazine, The New York Times, Bust and Bitch. Heather’s essays, fiction, poetry and photography have appeared in their own publications as well as in Teen Vogue, The Guardian, RH Reality Check/Rewire, Issues Magazine (AU), PIF Magazine, Maxi Magazine, Women’s Studies; An inter-disciplinary journal, On Our Backs,; in the anthologies Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, Viscera, The Mammoth Book of Erotic Women, 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. Heather has been quoted in many sexuality books, and their work has been used in university, school, community and clinic curricula.

Heather was previously an early childhood Montessori educator. A graduate with honors of Chicago’s Academy for the Arts, where they studied music and creative writing, Heather won a National Academy of Poets Younger Poets award in their teens, continued their formal education (if you can call it that) at Shimer College, studying literature and sociology, and later studied at the Midwest Montessori Teacher Training Center. Heather is also trained as a facilitator for Teen Talking Circles.

They’re navigating middle age with as much grace as they can muster (spoiler: not much), and currently live and work in their hometown of Chicago after 20 years away. Outside work, Heather plays with their dogs, is outside as much as possible, makes and geeks out about music, watches movies, rolls around, cooks vegetarian delights and does their best to do right by their plants, including the Monstera Deliciosa being a bit of a drama queen at the top of this page.

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for we who are on literal fire

What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities and You

What to Expect When You’re Not Expected to Expect Anything Anymore

From Heather Corinna (that’s me), who has spent the last two decades getting millions of adolescents around the world through the wholly unnecessary crucible puberty is made to be; who spent another bunch of years before that as an emotional doula for giant-sized toddler feelings, comes a guide to the menopausal transition that could only have been written while experiencing both perimenopause and a pandemic, and even then, barely. It’s time — bloodied (truly) and limping through this particular finish line together — for a journey through yet another unavoidable life passage. Buckle up.

Feminist, health-forward, and no b.s., it’s a guide to the menopausal transition that extends a sweaty hand and offers clear, straightforward information about our bodies, minds, lives and what in the actual fuck is going on with them during this time of hormonal mischief and mayhem.

Perimenopause and menopause experiences are as unique as all of us who move through them. While there’s no one-size-fits-all, What Fresh Hell Is This? (Hachette Go!) tells you what can happen and what you can do to take care of yourself, all the while busting pernicious myths, offering real self-care tips–the kind that won’t break the bank or your soul–and running the gamut from hot flashes to hormone therapy. With big tent, practical, clear information and support, inclusive of so many long been left out of the discussion—people with disabilities, queer, trans, nonbinary and other gender-diverse people, BIPOC, working class and other folks—Fresh Hell is the cooling pillow and empathetic best friend to help you through the fire.

Besides my own heated opinions (Do you see what I did there? Of course you did, because I don’t even have the shame to hide the most lethargic of my jokes anymore, I put them right out there for everybody), in Fresh Hell you’ll also hear from the wise, winsome and wonderful:

  • Mona Eltahawy
  • Kimberly Dark
  • Soraya Chemaly
  • Rebecca Scritchfield
  • Leela Sinha
  • Susie Bright
  • s.e. smith
  • Hanne Blank
  • Sharon Lamb
  • kiran nigam
  • Joan Price
  • Omisade Burney-Scott
  • Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
  • Joanne Mason, in an appendix by and for trans women and other folks born with testicular systems about your own versions of menopause
  • Maude and more (it’s not a cast of thousands, but if they hadn’t stopped me, it would have been)

Just in case all that didn’t have you dragging your tired tucas to your bookseller already, perhaps the Archie Bongiovanni comics, the mad libs, the romantic odes, not-drunk-histories-but-not-exactly-sober-histories-either and other shenanigans borne from great hormonal delirium will. And if you want this book because of all those other folks and that other stuff, or even in spite of, and not because of me, that’s okay, I understand. I’m not my favorite person right now, either. Just like if you want this book, chances are good you’re probably not yours.

“I have loved Heather Corinna’s work for twenty years, and What Fresh Hell Is This? is their best yet. This book feels like your best friend talking to you over drinks–if your best friend is a shit-talking, patriarchy-smashing, intersectionally feminist professor of the history of reproductive medicine and also an endocrinologist with a side hustle as a comedian. Please read this book.”―Emily Nagoski, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Come As You Are

You can also read an excerpt from the book at Dame magazine and an interview about it at Rewire!