Five years after his series of stories on inner-city honor students and their struggles won Ron Suskind a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, he will speak at DePaul University on “Finding the Unseen on a College Campus.” The talk takes place Oct. 17 at 7 p.m. in room 154 of the Schmitt Academic Center, 2320 N. Kenmore Ave.

Suskind, a senior national affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal in Washington, D.C., has written about race, class and gender for the paper’s front page since joining the staff in 1990. His prize-winning series launched his acclaimed book, “A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League.”

Referred to by one reviewer as “a searing expose of social injustice,” the book traces the journey of Cedric Jennings from a rough southeast Washington, D.C. high school, to Brown University. Suskind provides a narration of Jennings’ senior year at Ballou Senior High School and his freshmen year at Brown.

Today Jennings holds a degree from the Ivy League institution of higher education and can be counted among the success stories of urban youth.

Suskind travels the country speaking at colleges and universities. He was formerly on staff at the New York Times and the St. Petersburg Times, and he worked as editor of Boston Business magazine. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

“A Hope in the Unseen” was required summer reading for DePaul’s incoming freshmen, which means, according to David Joliffe, director of First Year Programs at DePaul, presumably some 1,800 students have read the book. Suskind will hold several informal gatherings with DePaul students. His lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 17 is free and open to the public. Open seating admission is on a first-come first-serve basis.