Year's Best Obituary Writing: The 2017 Grimmy Awards

Obit writers from around the globe gathered at Legacy this October.

Last weekend, Legacy.com hosted the Society of Professional Obituary Writers (SPOW) in our Evanston office for ObitCon 2017. Over the course of three days, some two dozen obituary writers from newspapers, online media, funeral homes, and more gathered to talk about our unique craft.

Writing obituaries is a specialized profession – and those of us who do it find that our friends and family, even our fellow writers, don't always get what we do. So it's a relief and a delight to have a few days with others who understand the central truth of our craft: Obituaries aren't really about death; they're about life. And writing them every day is usually more life-affirming than it is morbid.

Also, sometimes we get really sick of certain words, like "iconic" and "legendary."

That last was one of the many topics SPOW members discussed in between hearing talks from our colleagues, including Adam Bernstein, obituaries editor at the Washington Post; Owen Youngman, the Knight Professor of digital media strategy at Northwestern University; Susan Soper, founder of ObitKit; and Stephen Segal, senior managing editor at Legacy.com.

And lest anyone think obituary writers don't know how to have fun, we watched a movie, too – the fascinating documentary "Obit," which highlights the journalists who work at the New York Times obituaries desk – and asked questions of its acclaimed director, Vanessa Gould, who joined us in person.

ObitCon concluded on Sunday with an awards ceremony honoring the best professional obituary writing from 2016 and 2017 (plus the work of one great journalist whose writing over a span of years has merited a lifetime achievement award). The members of SPOW tend to have a healthy sense of humor about public perceptions of our craft, so the awards ceremony is known as the Grimmys.

Five trophies were awarded:

• The Alana Baranick Lifetime Achievement Award went to Andrew Meacham of the Tampa Bay Times, whose 2015 feature series "Finding Fletcher" documented his search for the fate of his long-lost childhood friend.

• Obituary Writer of the Year went to Linnea Crowther of Legacy.com, whose body of work celebrated the cultural impact of numerous artists, musicians, actors, writers, and athletes who died during 2016. Under consideration for this award were her obituaries for Gene Wilder, Leonard Cohen, Richard Adams, Gordie Howe, and William Peter Blatty.

• Best Obituary of an "Ordinary Joe/Jane" went to Maureen O'Donnell of the Chicago Sun-Times, whose winning story paid tribute to a Butterball Turketermined. Pellan knew what was at stake, and left the room to talk with Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin. He emerged several minutes later. Solving the case, he said, outweighed any legal technicalities. I braced myself as he turned the screen.

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