LA-based comedian Gini Sikes appears at The Improv, The Hollywood Comedy Store, The La Jolla Comedy Store — as well as at multiple crime scenes. An award-winning journalist, she’s interviewed serial murderers, drug mules, and gangbangers.
Exploring life’s dark side was her destiny.
She was raised in Wisconsin, a state known for cannibals Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein. She landed her first job at the teen magazine Tiger Beat, working with a woman who married Richard Ramirez aka the notorious serial killer The Night Stalker.
In New York she earned her master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She served as an editor on both Metropolis and Mademoiselle magazines. As a writer, she captured the inner lives of such iconic actors as Nicolas Cage and Harrison Ford, along with coal miners, astrophysicists, and chimps who spoke sign language for numerous publications including The Washington Post, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Essence, Travel and Leisure, and The New York Times.
In television, Gini created programing for A&E, PBS and VH1’s Where are They Now? At MTV, she produced episodes of the documentary series True Life, along with the critically acclaimed Rock the Vote 2000 election special. She also served as production supervisor for multiple seasons of Matt Groening’s Netflix animated series, Disenchantment.
After a year investigating girls in street gangs, Gini chronicled her experience in her book, 8ball Chicks, now used in college courses around the globe. Due to the success of her literary and broadcast work, she’s appeared as a crime expert on multiple platforms such as NPR, PBS, Geraldo Rivera , Bill O’Reillly, and Investigation Discovery.
In 2018 Gini had enough of killing on the street and turned to killing on stage. She’s been blessed to perform with such headliners as Pete Holmes (Crashing), Tom Arnold (Roseanne), Felicia Michaels (Full House), Rick Overton (Mrs. Doubtfire), and Darrell Hammond (SNL).
Drawing from her off-beat life, Gini explores her missteps as a clueless divorcee, her hatred of unicorns, and her frequent faux pas due to a case of benign turrets and no self-censor. A self-described Pessimistic Pollyanna, she performs comedy to make sense of it all.
