A pair of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists will be visiting Penn State this week. Join your friends in the College of Communications (most are required to attend for classes) for the Foster-Foreman Conference of Distinguished Writers. Isabel Wilkerson and Paige St. John will be speaking to students and participating in question and answer sessions.

Wilkerson, the author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, will be speaking in the HUB Heritage Hall at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 11.

St. John, an investigative reporter at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, will speak in the HUB Auditorium at 10:10 a.m. on Wednesday, October 12.

Wilkerson was rewarded with the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for her work covering floods in the Midwest and for her profile of a 10-year-old New York City boy who took care of his four siblings. She was the first African-American woman to win the prize. She spent the majority of her career as a national correspondent for The New York Times. She currently works as a Professor of Journalism at Boston University.

St. John earned her Pulitzer Prize this year for her two-year investigative series titled “Florida’s Insurance Nightmare,” which discussed the Florida property insurance industry. St. John previously worked for The Detroit News and the Associated Press.

The Foster-Foreman Conference, which originated in 1999, was recently renamed to honor renowned Penn State faculty member Gene Foreman. Foreman has been a part of the twice-a-year event since its start and will be honored at the conference.

Foreman worked in the newspaper industry for over 40 years including stints as a copy editor for The New York Times and the managing editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He taught at Penn State from 1998 to 2006 and since has contributed as a visiting professor and coordinator of the Conference that now includes his name.

The event is named after esteemed Penn State alumni Larry and Ellen Foster, who made the event possible with a gift in 1999. The conference is free and all students are welcome to attend.