Yay! I Won An Award
A column that I wrote for the Standard-Examiner has third place in the Best Essay category of the annual Association of Food Journalists Awards. The awards were given at the annual AFJ conference in Memphis.
The first place winner was from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the second place winner was from the Washington Post, so I figure I’m in pretty good company.
My column ran Dec. 31, and the headline was It talked about how my dad missed the pleasures of eating real food while he was fed through his stomach for several months. Here is a repost of the story.
The AFJ Awards represent an extremely tough competition from newspapers, magazines, bloggers and freelancers around the country. In 2000, my Dining Through The Decades series for the Standard-Examiner won 2nd place Best Series. In 2008, I won a 3rd place Best Food Section award for the Deseret News.
For me, the hardest part of writing a personal experience story is picking and choosing what to keep in and leave out. You’re so close to the story, it’s hard to be objective. You have a limited amount of space. Too many details and people will tune out. I glossed over a lot of the medical stuff Dad went through, and I think that was a good choice. But I probably didn’t give enough credit to my sister, Christi, and her husband, Jerry, and also my brother Travis. There were a lot of little details of many kindnesses shown to Dad.
But, maybe those can be used another story someday.