Carly-Anne graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Parkside with a degree in English and a minor in Women and Gender Studies. She has been the recipient of the Bank One Student Leadership Scholarship, the Z-Chi National Scholarship, an Academic Achievement Award, and an Outstanding Graduate Award. Her critique of Arielle Greenberg’s “Gurlesque” aesthetic theory was the first place recipient for the UW-Parkside Women and Gender Studies’ Teresa Peck Award. She has had poetry published in The Bathroom, Monkey Puzzle, Outhouse, Straylight, and Boo, her visual art has been featured in Outhouse and the Racine Arts Council’s Truth, Trust, and Transition exhibition, and her micro play, “Board,” was produced by the UW-Parkside Original New Play Festival . . .
During her time at UW-Parkside, she has served as the Social Program Chair, Activism Chair, Vice President, and President of Rainbow Alliance consecutively.
She served three years as a senator for Parkside Student Government
Association, where she sat on the Segregated University Fees Allocation
Committee, which she went on to direct (as the second woman in the history of UWP). She also spent two years as secretary for
Sacred Circle. She played cello in the orchestra, and played one season
with the Women's Rugby team. She has provided an array of shows
for Parkside's WIPZ College Radio, volunteered with Get Out the Vote
and the Student Democrats in '04, and has worked as an editor for The Ranger News. She is a certified student leader and has received
the Emerging Student Leader Award in 2004, the Distinguished Student
Leader award in 2007 and 2008.
Her experiences at UW-Parkside have awarded her countless opportunities to engage in educational and empowering workshops. She has spent five years as an activist for the LGBTQISA community at UW-Parkside, during which she worked with Wisconsin's United Council, Action/Fair Wisconsin, The Milwaukee LGBT Center, Kenosha PFLAG, and the Unitarian Churches of Kenosha and Racine. In 2007, she led the victorious struggle for administration recognition of LGBTQISA students at UW-Parkside, resulting in the job creation for an LGBT Director and a campus LGBT Center. She also won a staggering battle through student senate legislation for the creation of a committee focused on representation of LGBTQISA students.
She
has presented lectures on The Politics of Menstruation
and Society, Making Big Change at a Small Campus with a Tiny Budget, and How to
Keep the Bacon in an LGBT Sandwich, Sexism in Sexual Assault Awareness, Internalized
Homophobia in the LGBT Community, The Marriage Amendment: Why it Hurts
Wisconsin Citizens, The Invisible I in LGBT and has spoken to numerous classes on behalf of UW-Parkside's Rainbow Alliance.
In 2007, she presented Three Letters, a creative non-fictional account of her experience with HPV at both UW-Parkside and UW-Stout. The following year, she presented her research on Men Women and Downfall in Beowulf, 90 Miles Between Myth and Reality, and Power and Privilege in the HPV Awareness Campaign, which was later presented as part of the UW-Parkside Women and Gender Studies Department Lecture Series.
She has spoken at a number of events and with Gay/Straight Alliances across the country, and has even been known to read a poem here or there.
Carly-Anne was born in St. Louis and grew up in Waukegan, Illinois and Kenosha County, where she graduated from Wilmot Union High School. She currently lives with her partner-in-crime: author, poet, activist, Nicholas Michael Ravnikar, and their two baby-kitties, Guillame and Mallarme (who, sadly, do not look this cute anymore), in Racine, Wisconsin, where she works as a freelance videographer and Youth Programs Coordinator for the LGBT Center of Southeastern Wisconsin.