Carol Wical was born in Lima, Ohio and spent her first four years on a dairy farm outside the village of Botkins. Celebrating her fourth birthday as a resident of Wacol Immigrant Hostel, she grew up in regional southeast Queensland.
She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education where she was taught Australian literature by Bruce Dawe and Michael Sharkey, and a Master of Philosophy in Cultural Studies from the University of Queensland. Barbara Garlick once described early drafts of her Masters Qualifying dissertation on gender in the works of Jeanette Winterson as having been 'written on a Corn Flake packet with a thumbnail dipped in tar'. She holds an MPhil in the field of Cultural Studies.
Wical was part of the AustLit team 2006-2013 working as an indexer, Content, and Projects Manager. Her research interests centre around the representation of active women in popular culture and other public spaces. Creative interest leans toward genre fiction and includes the short film 'Force of Will', made under the auspices of QPIX.