Bonnie J. Rough is a cultural explorer and big thinker who brings challenging topics refreshingly to light. She is the award-winning author of Beyond Birds & Bees, The Girls, Alone, and Carrier.
Sex Ed | Schools | Parenting | Consent | Gender | Justice
"Filled with sweet, poignant, and laugh-out-loud stories, Beyond Birds and Bees is a most accessible and most informative book that will help parents and caring adults become more adept at talking to young people about healthy sexuality. Bonnie J. Rough offers practical advice, gentle encouragement, and is vulnerable enough to let us learn from her own failures and successes. If you’re looking for a book that provides a heartfelt and common sense approach to raising sexually healthy children, you’ve found it!"
- Al Vernacchio, MSEd, author of For Goodness Sex: Changing the Way We Talk to Teens About Sexuality, Values, and Health
Excerpt One afternoon, Dan and I took the kids to NEMO, Amsterdam’s science museum. Drifting together and apart among scores of other parents and kids, we spent the better part of a day exploring everything from kinetics to DNA. When we finally tumbled outside into the afternoon sunshine, Dan turned to me, amazement on his face. “Could you believe that exhibit?” he asked.
“Which exhibit?” Clearly, I’d missed something juicy... Read more
A vibrant, inspiring, and generous presenter who connects authentically with her audiences, Bonnie J. Rough has spoken to groups across the United States and overseas on topics ranging from culture and science to parenting, education, and the writer’s life.
On a journey to learn the fate of her great-great-grandmother Anna, award-winning author Bonnie J. Rough separates from her family for a surprising journey into the difficult past and precarious present of Estonia, the former Soviet state of her heritage.
Excerpt While I was trying to rationalize the idea of a solo ramble in Europe I decided to call Vona Ema, my grandmother. I told her I was thinking of a visit to Estonia—a place she had never been, and now, due to difficulty walking and blindness from macular degeneration, would never go.
“Do you know where your grandmother Anna is buried?” I asked.
“Nowhere, I would think,” she said. “She was murdered by the Russians”... Read more
As they consider becoming parents in a time when genetic testing offers results that can lead to excruciating decisions, Bonnie J. Rough and her husband find themselves caught between science and the heart in a modern moral crisis.
Excerpt Beyond abstinence, neither my mother nor my great-grandmother had choices. No gene had been identified. No test had been devised. Not until I was already a young woman would scientists announce that they had discovered the location, on the galactic genomic map, of the HED mutation. Thrilled to tears, my mother called my college dorm room with the news. But on that day, there was something that neither my mother nor I fully understood... Read more
