Meet the Members
Genevieve Balivet, President
Genevieve Balivet is a Writing 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’s interested in becoming a writer of fiction and creative nonfiction and an editor, book consultant, or copywriter. Her small army of hobbies outside of writing includes playing violin and piano, crocheting, sewing, fencing, reading, and watching Star Wars animated shows.
Cate Woods, Vice President
Cate is pursuing a major in Writing with a minor in English. In addition to being part of OPW, she works as a writing consultant for the Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors, a member of the Fishladder Art and Writing Journal, and a light technician for the Stage club. She is also a writer and copy editor for InWriting, Grand Valley’s Writing Department’s newsletter. Cate loves to read, write poetry, and play a rigorous match of tennis in her freetime. Cate plans on working in the publishing scene as an editor after graduation.
Malarie Johnson, Financial Officer
Malarie is a first-year student majoring in Psychology and minoring in Criminal Justice. She is also a member of GVSU’s Bellay Dance Club and is constantly looking for new student organizations to try out. Her main passions are the power of creative writing and how to use psychology to solve crimes, hoping to spend her post-college years working as a criminal psychologist while being an author on the side. Some of her many hobbies include reading whatever books she can get her hands on, writing more of her book series or another of her many creative writing projects, finding new music or Broadway plays to listen to on repeat, creating Spotify playlists for her characters, daydreaming of traveling the world, and watching animated media religiously. Don’t ask her about her book series unless you have a day to spare. It would also be best not to mention Arcane or any Leigh Bardugo book if you don’t want to end up hearing hours of character analyses.
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.