Noted novelist Sarah Schulman has been selected the first Loughead-Eldredge Visiting Writer by the department of English at Wayne State University. She will present a lecture at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 23, in room 3234, 51 W. Warren and a reading at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 25, at the Writer's Voice/YMCA Arts and Humanities Center, 51 W. Hancock, third floor. Schulman is the author of seven fiction novels including The Sophie Horowitz Story, Girls, Visions and Everything, and last year's Shimmer. In addition she has published two books of nonfiction, My American History and Stagestruck. The Los Angeles Times noted that Schulman's gift is her character's capacity for grace under pressure and her special comedic expression, "engaging, alternately hectoring and caressing. It is a New York voice, struggling to liberate itself from received (conventional) notions about love and identity." Schulman has received awards from Columbia University's Revson Fund and the American Library Association and was a finalist for the 1998 Pushcart Prize. She lives and writes in New York. The department established the Loughead-Eldredge Visiting Writer Fund with the support of John Eldredge. The fund will allow an annual visit of a novelist of national prominence for 3-5 days. The novelist will provide a reading and a lecture or more informal talk, both open to the public; a master class for students in creative writing; and an informal session with students and faculty. For more information call the department at (313) 577-2450.