Sonia Nazario is the author of “Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother,” a 2006 national bestseller that won two book awards.

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – June 4, 2010) The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who chronicled a Honduran boy’s struggle to find his mother in the United States will speak at 10 a.m. Thursday, July 1, in Overton Hall at California Lutheran University.

Sonia Nazario is the author of “Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother,” a 2006 national bestseller that won two book awards. The book is based on her 2003 newspaper story, which won more than a dozen awards including the Pulitzer Prize in Journalism for feature writing, the George Polk Award for International Reporting and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize. The book is required reading for incoming freshmen at dozens of colleges and high schools across the country.

Nazario has spent 20 years reporting and writing about social issues, most recently as a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her stories have tackled some of the country’s most difficult problems. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1998 for a series on children of drug-addicted parents and she won a George Polk Award for Local Reporting in 1994 for a series about hunger among California schoolchildren.

The writer, who grew up in Kansas and in Argentina, has written extensively from Latin America and about Latinos in the United States. Hispanic Business Magazine has named Nazario among the most influential Latinos, and Hispanic Magazine has designated her a “trendsetter.”

The CLU California Reading and Literature Project is presenting the free lecture and book signing. RSVP by Friday, June 25, to the School of Education at (805) 493-3705.