Sonia Nazario: author presentation and book signing

CLU California Reading and Literature Project presents Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother, for a presentation and book signing.

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 this country's most intractable problems: hunger, drug addiction, immigration. She has won numerous national journalism and book awards.

In 2003, her story of a Honduran boy's struggle to find his mother in the U.S., titled "Enrique's Journey," won more than a dozen awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the George Polk Award for International Reporting, the Grand Prize of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists Guillermo Martinez-Marquez Award for Overall Excellence. Expanded into a book, Enrique's Journey became a national bestseller and won two book awards. It is now required reading for incoming freshmen at dozens of colleges and high schools across the U.S.

In 1998, Nazario was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series on children of drug-addicted parents. And in 1994, she won a George Polk Award for Local Reporting for a series about hunger among schoolchildren in California.

Nazario has been named among the most influential Latinos by Hispanic Business Magazine and a "trendsetter" by Hispanic Magazine. Nazario, who grew up in Kansas and in Argentina, has written extensively from Latin America and about Latinos in the United States.

Register by June 25, 2010