Foster Conference of Distinguished Writers

Video Archives
Spring 2009: Connie Schultz / Michael Bamberger
Spring 2008: Dana Priest / Jim Wooten

The twice-a-year Foster Conference of Distinguished Writers regularly attracts some of the best writers in the country to campus for free public lectures and to work in hands-on and small-group sessions with students in the College of Communications.

Overall, 24 Pulitzer Prize winners have visited for the conference since 1999.

For the Fall 2009 session, scheduled Oct. 13-14 on the University Park campus, visitors will be Sonia Nazario and Mark Feeney.

Nazario, author of "Enrique's Journey," which won more than a dozen awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing and the George Polk Award for International Reporting, will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 13, in the HUB-Robeson Center Auditorium. As a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times, her stories have focused on difficult issues including hunger, drug addiction and immigration.

Feeney, arts critic for the Boston Globe, will speak at 10:10 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14, in the HUB-Robeson Center Auditorium. Feeney has worked at the paper as a researcher, writer and editor since graduating from Harvard in 1979. Feeney is the author of “Nixon at the Movies.” He was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his “penetrating and versatile command of the visual arts, from film and photography to painting.” Currently, Feeney is an American studies lecturer at Brandeis University.

Previous conferences have attracted writers such as:

• Michael Bamberger of Sports Illustrated;
• Buzz Bissinger, author of "Friday Night Lights";
  
• author Richard Ben Cramer;
• Ken Fuson of the Des Moines Register;
• Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post;
• Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette;
• David Halberstam, who authored numerous best-selling books;
• Diana Henriques of The New York Times;
  
• Anne Hull of the Washington Post;
  
• Jerry Kammer of Copley News Service;
  
• Bill Lyon of The Philadelphia Inquirer;
• author David Maraniss;
  
• Walter Mears, retired Associated Press correspondent;
  
• Penn State alumnus Rod Nordland of Newsweek;
• syndicated columnist Leonord Pitts Jr.;
  
• William Raspberry, formerly of the Washington Post;
• Sydney Schanberg, formerly of The New York Times and The Village Voice;
• Connie Schultz of the Cleveland Plain Dealer;
  
• Alicia Shepard, senior writer for American Journalism Review;
• Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution;
  
• David Shribman, executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; and
  
• Steve Twomey, a Pulitzer Prize-winning feature writer.

Larry Foster, a 1948 graduate of Penn State, and his wife, Ellen Miller Foster, a 1949 graduate, gave $500,000 in 1997 to endow the Foster Professorship in Communications to support new strategies for improving students' writing skills. The Fosters have also helped Penn State students through their support of the University Libraries, endowing the Larry and Ellen Foster Communications Librarian and funding Foster Auditorium, a tiered 134-seat facility designed to support library instruction and programming.