Carla was born in Las Vegas, New Mexico and raised in the San Francisco Bay area in California. She received a BS degree in Human Development from UC Davis and an MS and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her dissertation focused on assessing differential treatment of underrepresented students in college classrooms.

Carla is the editor of Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (1991), which won the LAMBDA Book Award for Best Lesbian Anthology and the Out/Write Vanguard Award for Best Pioneering Contribution to the field of Gay/Lesbian Lifestyle Literature; and of Living Chicana Theory (1998).

She is the author of several short stories, and various articles on identity, sexuality, and higher education. She works as a Director of Diversity programs in the College of Engineering at U.C. Berkeley, and has focused some of her recent activities on improving the classroom climate for underrepresented students in the College of Engineering using Interactive Theater.

Her novel What Night Brings won the 2003 Miguel Mármol Prize and runner-up for the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award, as well as Honorable Mention for the Writers at Work competition. Carla has lectured in Ethnic Studies at the U.C. Berkeley and Mills College and in Women's Studies at S.F. State University. She lives in Berkeley, California.