Terry Whalin at The Writing Life blog just returned from the national meeting of the AJSA (American Society of Journalists & Authors) held in New York. This is the leading organization of professional nonfiction writers, with nearly 1300 members. Every year, awards are given for the most outstanding pieces of nonfiction writing.

For the first time, this year the AJSA sent out a press release with links to the winning articles. If you’re looking for ways to improve your writing, read through some of these articles and see if you can figure out why they won awards.

In particular, if you’re a parent of a teenage daughter, you should read Lisa Collier Cool’s Rescuing Rosalie, Part I and Rescuing Rosalie, Part II, as published in The Ladies’ Home Journal. This is the traumatic story of how the Cool’s teen daughter ran away from home and what happened. Lisa writes, “For eight unbearable days after our 16-year-old daughter disappeared, we had no idea where she was or if she was even alive. Our frantic search introduced us to a strange and shocking teen subculture we had been completely blind to.”

I hope you’ll bookmark this link and take some time to check out Lisa’s award-winning story over the weekend. It’s very powerful.