Vanna Marie Bonta

Vanna Bonta was an American novelist, essayist and poet, and the author of Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel, which Publishers Weekly reviewed as the first definitive work of "quantum fiction," an emerging 21st century literary genre. A haiku by Bonta is among the top five selected onboard a NASA spacecraft (MAVEN), which launched from Cape Canaveral to the planet Mars in November 2013. Bonta began writing poetry and short fiction at age six. She has ridden camels in Egypt's Sahara Desert, elephants in Thailand, learned sharp-shooting from her father at age nine and by age eleven had traveled around the world twice and spoke four languages. As an actress, Bonta cameos as the superhero's young mother in the classic fantasy movie, The Beastmaster. She has worked as a voice actor on numerous feature movies and television. One of her stories was purchased for Star Trek:The Next Generation. The History Channel followed her into zero gravity to test a spacesuit she invented. In the The Universe TV episode, Bonta talked about humanity colonizing planets beyond Earth. The program depicted a futuristic scenario of a mother reading Bonta's novel Flight in a space station orbiting Earth. The Bonta signature voice celebrates human-centric themes that knit cultural differences with universality. Her stories juxtapose the everyday and the cosmos. She is survived by her husband, Allen Newcomb.