Dawn LaValle
Minnesota was home for the first 17 years of my life, a small town with no stop light, three bars, two churches and a feed mill, named Hugo. From there, I moved east to the big city and the University of Chicago, where I concentrated in Classics and a strange and wonderful program called Fundamentals: Issues and Texts. Continuing eastward, I moved to Indiana for a Masters in Early Christian Studies at Notre Dame, followed by a year off living the pastoral life as a "Monastic Intern" at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, a Catholic Benedictine women's monastery in Connecticut that is located on a 400-acre farm. After a year of milking cows by hand, watching cows I know get butchered, and then eating them, I returned to academia, beginning the Ph.D. in Classics last year, where I focus on the Greek literature of Late Antiquity. I'm also involved in the Georgian Choir, honey bees, Rock, Paper, Scissors, and other wholesome activities.