Meet the Members
Genevieve Balivet, 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 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.
Randee Gage, Vice President
Randee Gage is senior at Grand Valley, majoring in Writing and minoring in Digital Studies. She works part-time for the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, as well as consultant for the Fred Meijer Center for Writing & Michigan Authors. Her passions lie in digital & media literacy, and understanding how writing and other forms of communication influence our daily lives and wider culture. She hopes to work as an acquisitions editor after graduation, and maybe even publish work of her own. Outside of writing, her hobbies include reading, watching old films, making hyper specific Spotify playlists and spending time with her beloved cat, Seymour.
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!
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.