Gina Barreca Ph.D.

Gina Barreca, Ph.D., is a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of English Literature at the University of Connecticut and recipient of UCONN’s highest award for excellence in teaching.

Hailed as “smart and funny” by People magazine and “Very, very funny. For a woman,” by Dave Barry, Gina Barreca was deemed a “feminist humor maven” by Ms. Magazine. Novelist Wally Lamb said, “Barreca’s prose, in equal measures, is hilarious and humane." Her work has appeared in most major publications, including The New York Times, The Independent of London, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cosmopolitan, and The Harvard Business Review.

Gina is the author of the bestselling They Used to Call Me Snow White But I Drifted: Women’s Strategic Use of Humor, Babes in Boyland: A Personal History of Coeducation in the Ivy League, Perfect Husbands and Other Fairy Tales, as well as seven other books, many of which have been translated into other languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and German; she is the editor of eighteen others, including Don’t Tell Mama: The Penguin Book of Italian American Writing, The Signet Book of American Humor, and Fast Funny Women: 75 Essays of Flash Non-Fiction.

Appearing, often as a repeat guest, on NPR, the BBC, the CBC, the TODAY Show, and, yes, Oprah, Gina has spoken around the world to groups large and small about humor, power, gender, popular culture, relationships, and writing. Gina’s blog at Psychology Today has well over 7 million views and her next collection, Fast Fierce Women, will be out in 2022.