Tower Talk - July 2022

Message from the Alumnae and Alumni Engagement Team

Greetings Alumnae and Alumni,

With summer in full swing, the campus is beautiful and quiet. Our colleagues in Institutional Advancement have just closed out the fiscal year, and we want to take a moment to thank all of our incredible alumni who generously made gifts ranging from $5.00 to over $100,000.

It's not the amount you give; it's the fact that you give every year that makes a world of difference. Thank you so much for your steadfast support.

Your Alumni Team is hard at work planning exciting events and initiatives for the new year, and we are beyond blessed to have the volunteers we do! Alumnae and Alumni Weekend kicks off on September 30, and our Reunion Committee is reaching out to classmates in the 2's and 7's, with a special addition of the Class of 1971 which is also celebrating its 50th reunion this year. Still, it's important to note that ALL alumni are welcome at our events from September 30 – October 2.  

As always, we are anxious to hear from you! Please share with us your news and life updates whenever you can. In addition, we want to hear about trips, vacations, and get-togethers you're doing with friends and classmates. Are you proud of the new promotion you just landed, or have you changed companies or job fields? Have you gotten married? Moved abroad? Welcomed a grandchild into the world? We want to know.

We hope your summers are filled with fun and relaxation whenever possible, and we hope we see more of you this coming year back on campus, at an event, or virtually.

Thank you for making our Notre Dame Alumni Community so incredible.

Warmly,
Alex & Rose
Your Alumni Engagement Team

An Interview with Milda De Voe '90

Milda De Voe '90 graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in Music and a minor in English. After working for a bit as an actor in New York and temp secretary, she received a MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. She has since wrote and published many writing projects and started a non-profit, Pen Parentis. Read more about Milda's story below.

What is your favorite memory from your time at Notre Dame?

I got this idea that I could do anything. There was just no limit to what I could do on this campus. And so, the first year that I was there I was freshman class president. I found all these old traditions. I was appalled that all of the traditions had gone away. This place has huge traditions and we should be celebrating all of them. I made everybody do Singsong, I helped put on a production of Godspell, and I made a faculty talent show.

My favorite day was walking out of history class and having this surreal moment of connecting what we were learning to the book I was studying in English literature, which was written in the same time period. I went running around the campus so excited to tell all my professors. It was like this moment of oh, my education makes sense. That was the coolest thing, even though they all probably thought I was completely insane, just a weird sophomore running around.

Photo credit: Luba Grosman

Why do you stay engaged with Notre Dame as an alum?

I love meeting the other alumni and hearing their stories. It's awesome when we discover that we had the same teacher 30 years apart. I like talking about what it was like to be at Notre Dame, and all the traditions and other quirky stuff that makes this place special. I like going to the events on campus, and would go more frequently if I lived closer. The campus is just so beautiful, and anything that happens on campus is a special event.
 

Can you talk about your non-profit, Pen Parentis, from how it started to where it is now?

I started a nonprofit called Pen Parentis which helps writers stay on a creative track after they have kids. I started it because I found that writing was hard to complete and to fit in with having kids. So, I needed a way to figure out how that works. We present a lot of wonderful writers that have kids, and talk to them about how they manage their lives with the demands of both the creative career and raising children. In the early 2000s, if you had children and you were a writer, it kind of pigeon-holed you in the industry to being seen as someone who would write either mommy blogs or children's literature. This wasn't the case for me, I wanted writing to be seen as a legitimate artistic career that had nothing to do with my parenting.

We have a literary Salon that's once a month on the second Tuesday of the month, and it's online and open to the general public. We bring together usually three authors that all have kids, and they're usually pretty famous. We ask these authors questions like, what did they do when their kids were little and how did they get to where they are now? How were they able to pay the rent with just money from writing and did they have extra jobs? We're trying to teach new authors that while it is not easy, it is
definitely not impossible to be a parent and a writer. Now with everything moving online, our membership has grown beyond New York City. It's easier to find parent friends and build a community within this organization that understand your situation.

What other writing projects are you working on?

I have written all types of creative writing - short stories, books, fiction, poetry, musicals. I created a weekly newsletter, This is Ridiculous, to tell people when my writing was available and do some writing for each edition. I released Book and Baby, The Complete Guide to Managing Chaos and Becoming A Wildly Successful Writer-Parent in 2021 too. 

All of Milda's writing projects can be found on her website. You can also sign up for Milda's newsletter and learn more about Pen Parentis.

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