Vanna Marie Bonta (April 3, 1953 – July 8, 2014) was an American writer, actress, and inventor. She was of partial Italian descent. She wrote '' Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel''. As an actress, Bonta played "Zed's Queen" in '' The Beastmaster''. She performed primarily as a voice talent on a roster of feature films, such as Disney's ''

Beauty and the Beast "Beauty and the Beast" is a fairy tale written by the French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in (''The Young American and Marine Tales''). Villeneuve's lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and publish ...

'', as well as on television. Bonta invented the 2suit, a flight garment designed to facilitate sex in

microgravity Weightlessness is the complete or near-complete absence of the sensation of weight, i.e., zero apparent weight. It is also termed zero g-force, or zero-g (named after the g-force) or, incorrectly, zero gravity. Weight is a measurement of the fo ...

environments of outerspace. The spacesuit was featured on '' The Universe television series'', which followed Bonta into zero gravity to film an episode titled '' Sex in Space'' that aired in 2009 on the

History Channel History (formerly and commonly known as the History Channel) is an American pay television television broadcaster, network and the flagship channel of A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney General Entertainme ...

. On 13 November 2013, a

haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...

by Bonta was one of 1,100 haiku launched from

Cape Canaveral Cape Canaveral () is a cape (geography), cape in Brevard County, Florida, in the United States, near the center of the state's Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast. Officially Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated ...

on the NASA spacecraft

MAVEN MAVEN is a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars to study the loss of that planet's atmospheric gases to space, providing insight into the history of the planet's climate and water. The name is an acronym for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution" w ...

to Mars.

Early life and family

Bonta was born on April 3, 1953 in Clarksville, Tennessee, United States. Her parents were Maria Luisa Ugolini Bonta (

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Ugolini), a painter from

Florence, Italy Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence was a centre of medieval European t ...

, and James Cecil Bonta, a military officer from

Kentucky Kentucky (, ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the ...

. Her grandfather was Luigi Ugolini, a Florentine knight. Her maternal aunt was Italian children's author Lidia Ugolini.

Literary career

In 1995, Bonta's first novel, '' Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel'' was published. ''Flight'' has been characterized as "inter-genre" (belonging to more than one genre simultaneously) by the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. History 19th century ...

, which reviewed it an "auspicious, genre-bending parable". ''Publishers Weekly'' described the debut work as running the gamut of particularly moving to quirky and hilarious satire, with "asides about bathtub books, self-doubt tapes and other foibles." In 2013, a haiku Bonta wrote was one of over 1100 that was launched to

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun. It is also known as the "Red Planet", because of its orange-red appearance. Mars is a desert-like rocky planet with a tenuous carbon dioxide () atmosphere. At the average surface level the atmosph ...

on the NASA spacecraft

. The haiku for the Mars trip were chosen by popular vote from a total 12,530 submissions. Bonta's submission was ranked in the top five.

Inventions

The 2suit

In 2006, Bonta gave talks about an invention she called the 2suit, a flight garment that can be attached to another 2suit to allow two or more people to stay in proximity to one another in low-gravity environments. Although it had several other potential applications, its primary purpose was to enable sex in space. Producers of the

television series '' The Universe'' approached Bonta in 2008, offering to manufacture a prototype of the 2suit and send Bonta into zero gravity to test it. She accepted. On the 2suit's segment of the episode, Bonta and her husband demonstrated how the suit works by kissing while wearing it. The documentary concluded that the "2Suit is one small step for humankind colonizing the universe." The 2suit received significant media attention after the episode, titled ''Sex in Space'', aired in 2009.

Lunar Lander Challenge

From 2007-09, she participated in the annual Lunar Lander Challenge, a competition sponsored by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

and

Northrop Grumman Northrop Grumman Corporation is an American multinational Aerospace manufacturer, aerospace and Arms industry, defense company. With 97,000 employees and an annual revenue in excess of $40 billion, it is one of the world's largest Arms industry ...

to commercially build a lightweight spacecraft for landing on the Moon. Bonta was a team member of BonNovA. As creative director, Bonta designed a pressure-release device for high-combustion engines.

References

External links

*
Recording of lecture in Italian by Prof. Gabriella Fiori about Flight: a quantum fiction novel
1996 {{DEFAULTSORT:Bonta, Vanna 1958 births 2014 deaths Place of birth missing Place of death missing 20th-century American novelists 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American poets American voice actresses American poets of Italian descent American women novelists 21st-century women inventors 20th-century American poets 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American women writers