Contact: ginamanola@gmail.com
Gina Manola writes entertaining and provocative stories about risk-takers and passionate dreamers who go to extremes to reinvent and reclaim themselves.
Her erotic female-revenge thriller CREATRIX earned an 8+/10 rating on the Black List, was named to their "This Week's Must Read" list, advanced as a Second Rounder at the 2025 Austin Film Festival, and is a 2026 The Writers Lab quarterfinalist.
Her most recent feature, WILD GODS, is a punk coming-of-age spiritual thriller about a grief-stricken Goth teenager who battles a charismatic pastor determined to claim her family's farm, uncovering a generations-old conspiracy as supernatural forces awaken around her. WILD GODS is a 2026 CineStory semifinalist and The Writers Lab quarterfinalist. Like her WILD GODS protagonist, Gina traded church camp for punk rock, found family, and a lifelong belief in the sacred power of creative rebellion.
Gina earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and moved to New York City, where she was represented by the Steffany Martz Gallery and served as Creative Director of the publishing companies Galison and Mudpuppy Press. She went on to found CALICO (2007–2013), an award-winning design and product development studio, and invented several best-selling children's games, including Feed The Woozle and Race To The Treasure. She later served as Assistant Dean of Marketing and Communications at the University of Illinois' College of Education, where she helped advance research-driven initiatives aimed at improving educational equity and outcomes.
She resides in Los Angeles, California.