THOUSAND OAKS : Prize Winner Due at Pulitzer Symposium

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Susan Sheehan will be the featured speaker at the 11th annual Pulitzer Symposium on Monday at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

Sheehan, a staff writer for the New Yorker, won a Pulitzer in 1983 for the book “Is There No Place on Earth for Me?,” her account of a schizophrenic patient’s treatment at Creedmore Hospital in New York.

Her most recent book, “Life for Me Ain’t Been No Crystal Stair,” charts the life of a child, Crystal, and her family, who for three generations have found themselves tied to the foster-care system in New York City.

The symposium will begin at 10 a.m. with a panel discussion on “Children in Crisis.” Panel participants include Sheehan; Michael Furlong, an associate professor at the UC Santa Barbara Graduate School of Education; Denise Segura, an associate professor of sociology at UCSB; Stephanie Taylor-Dinwiddie, executive director of USC’s Interprofessional Project at the School of Social Work; Jacquelyn McCroskey, associate professor of social work at USC; Pamela Jolicoeur, Cal Lutheran vice president of academic affairs, and Theo Harris and Michael Olnick of the Independent Living Program for Foster Youth, a Van Nuys-based organization.

Sheehan will also lecture on “My Life as a Writer” at 8 p.m.

The morning session will be held in the university’s Samuelson Chapel. The evening lecture will be at Cal Lutheran’s Preus-Brandt Forum. Both events are free. For information, call 493-3151.