Ginna's career as a professional chef led to her first cookbook. As executive chef for the Chopra Center in La Jolla, California, she wrote A Simple Celebration, the Nutritional Program for the Chopra Center for Well Being, published by Random House/Harmony Books, 1997.
Her eleven published titles now include six cookbooks. Her latest, GB’s Café – the bakery, released in 2025, contains more than 100 recipes from her lifetime of baking.
The Soup Kit, a detailed and comprehensive guide to making fine broths and gourmet soups, was published in 2019.
Ginna's other cookbooks include: Bonnebrook and The Gingerbread Farm, memoirs of her early years in the kitchen; and First You Grow the Pumpkin: favorite tricks for growing, preserving and creating in the kitchen. All the designs, photographs and illustrations in her cookbooks are by Ginna or from her collection.
Ginna's life and career have always centered around art, books and food. She has owned businesses (the Book Studio, Ginna & Co., Ginna’s Café), managed kitchens and cafés in other folks' businesses (Rainbow Ranch, Calistoga; the Chopra Center for Well Being, La Jolla; The Thunderbird Bookshop & Café, Carmel; Cornucopia Café & Market, Carmel) and created events for non-profits (the Carmel Music Society; the Carmel Bach Festival; the American Tall Ship Institute) as well as for many private clients, including Steven Seagal at his home and on a movie set in Southern California.
The path to book design began with the discovery of a local summer program called the Guild of the Books Arts Carmel, which inspired her and a colleague to open The Book Studio, a fine arts bookbinding boutique in Carmel, California.
Further studies in the arts included the UCLA Interior Design Program; Monterey Peninsula College, Art & Design; and privately with several artists in California, including Alison Stillwell Cameron (Chinese Calligraphy); Tulku Jamyang Rinpoche (Tibetan Thangka Painting); and Louisa Jenkins (collage).
Ginna’s published novels include Looking for John Steinbeck, Deke Interrupted and Humming in Spanish, all part of the Lavandula Series, a feel-good saga about three cousins growing up in Carmel Valley.
Bear Me Away to a Better World, her most ambitious novel, is a cozy mystery about a duo, the power of music and a chandelier, published in 2022.
Ginna and her husband David Gordon (www.spiritsound.com) originally founded Lucky Valley Press in 2011 to publish their own titles. Since then, they have helped 60 other independent authors successfully publish and distribute their books, more than 100 titles in all.