Meet the Members
Audrey Kelly, President
Audrey Kelly is a storyteller with a passion for web design and user experience; she is also a Writing major and Digital Studies minor. Outside of OPW, she works at Grand Valley State University Libraries as a User Experience Student. Audrey is involved in the writing community on campus, and even has two pieces published in the 2022 edition of fishladder. She is currently interning as the training coordinator for an adult foster care home and is also designing a website for a small artist. Audrey also loves writing Science Fiction short stories and hopes to someday write a novel if she can ever overcome the blinking cursor. When she’s not writing, you can find her reading or going on adventures with her best friends.
Genevieve Balivet, Vice President
Genevieve Balivet is a Writing and Statistics major, a creative writer who loves to apply words to anything at all. She is very involved in the writing community at Grand Valley, working as a Writing Consultant at the University’s Writing Center, serving as a Membership Officer for Wordsmiths, the campus’ creative writing club, and being part of fishladder’s staff as a Fiction Reader. She hopes to have a dual career of writing fiction of all lengths and being a statistician. Her small army of hobbies outside of writing includes playing violin and piano, crocheting, sewing, fencing, reading, and watching Star Wars animated shows.
Greg Carlson, Financial Officer
Greg is a writing major and an African American studies minor, previously majoring in Fine Arts and Art History. He is certified in screenwriting and film production with various credits and has experience writing and editing stage plays and full-length novels as well. He has written pieces for InWriting, as well as other publications during his various travels. He has lived on Mackinac Island, as well as in Chicago and Florida while working for Disney. Greg finds most of his inspiration through music and plays the cello, piano, and harp! Halloween is his favorite day of the year, and he is a professional tarot reader and astrologer on the side. He mainly aspires to write dark allegorical fiction through various Celtic lenses. Be careful not to mention Shirley Jackson or Kate Bush around him, unless you have several hours to spare!
Randee Gage, Membership Officer
Elise Taylor, Membership Officer
Elise Taylor is a Multimedia Journalism major with a minor in Writing. Additionally, she works as a consultant for the Speech Lab at GVSU. Elise is passionate about deepening her relationship with writing. She is also looking to get acquainted with it in its many forms including professional writing.
Laurence José, Faculty Advisor
Laurence José teaches courses in professional writing, writing in the global context, style, document design, multimodal composing, genre theory, and digital studies. She earned her PhD at Michigan Technological University in rhetoric and technical communication. She also holds a Diplôme d’Études Approfondies (M.A.) in general linguistics from the Université de Strasbourg. Her research focuses on international technical communication, rhetoric and genre theory, and program administration.