Gina Misiroglu's Biography

Gina Misiroglu is a best-selling author and book editor, specializing in the wordsmithing of popular culture, biography, American history, and women’s studies titles. She is the editor of the three-volume reference work American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History (2009)—winner of the 2010 RUSA Award for Outstanding Reference Source—and the bestselling trade anthology Girls Like Us: 40 Extraordinary Women Celebrate Girlhood in Story, Poetry, and Song (1999)—winner of the New York Public Library's “Best Book for Teens” Award and a staple in women’s studies bibliographies. Tagged by the media as a “pop-culturalist” after producing the first comprehensive encyclopedia on the historical and societal underpinnings of superheroes The Superhero Book: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic-Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes (2004), Misiroglu developed and edited, with Michael Eury, its companion title The Supervillain Book: The Evil Side of Comics and Hollywood (2006). Both trade reference books received numerous accolades from the comics and film communities, including a Top Picks selection from SCOOP. She pays homage to real-life heroes and heroines in her works such as Imagine: The Spirit of Twentieth-Century Heroes (2000).

A frequent speaker at the San Diego Comic Con, where she moderates panels for the Comics Arts Conference, a gathering of scholars who publish in the American studies and popular culture genres, Misiroglu is currently at work on a multivolume Encyclopedia of Women and American Popular Culture.