Introducing Gina Assley

by Gina Covarrubias

“When my fourth grade classmates and I grew bored of playing Anne Frank, we peeked our heads out of the imaginary attic and took stock of our alternate entertainment options. Hmmm, we asked ourselves, what else can we do to pass the long recesses on this boring playground filled with monkey bars and handball courts?

“That was when it became clear to me what our logical next step would pornography addiction.”

Introducing Gina Assley, unpaid school custodian, unwilling teen opera buff, and all-around social pariah. From kindergarten psych patient to accidental preteen racist, the one area Gina seems to excel at in life is the art of extreme humiliation. Whether she’s battling an arch-enemy for the title of top mod or stumbling into the middle of a police manhunt while tripping on LSD, navigating the cruel childhood landscape of slam books, punk rock wanabees, and ruthless middle school social climbers proves to be more challenging than Gina ever could have anticipated.

In this collection of short tales of roller disco, drugs, and dysfunction, Gina Covarrubias examines the dark underbelly of social and familial politics, where kids, parents, and teachers can easily become both the tormented and the tormentor at the exact same moment in time despite their best intentions.

153 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 14, 2011

About the author

Gina Covarrubias was born in Southern California a few days before the Manson Family trial began. Today she lives and writes in Las Vegas. No one has wasted more time, money, and energy on bad men than Gina, and every bit of it was her own fault.

Gina is the author of Friends to the End and I Do What I Want: The Unmotivated Young Woman’s Guide to Survival. Her short stories, essays, and poetry have been published in Hip Mama, Bust, Burning Angel, Clean Sheets, and in bestselling New York Times author Pamela Des Barres’s book Let It Bleed.