Ann Heinrichs Designated 2006 IWPA COA
by Terry Haycock, PenPoints Editor with Val Ensalaco
Preparing the Next Generation of Readers
Ann Heinrichs Designated 2006 IWPA COA
by Terry Haycock, PenPoints Editor with Val Ensalaco
An IWPA member since 1997, Ann Heinrichs modestly approached the podium
at the May 20 Awards Luncheon at the Chicago Athletic Club to receive the Communicator
of Achievement award. The award recognizes members for outstanding professional
achievement and service to the communications field and the community. When
I spoke to her shortly before the festivities to congratulate her, Ann said
she was overwhelmed by the honor and felt so lucky to be in the midst of so
much proven talent.
Author of more than 200 children's books, Ann never expected to become a writer.
She was discouraged by her high school journalism teachers and in college by
the behavior of student peers. She majored in music, earning two degrees in
piano performance. Ann became a writer because, "There came a point where
I was starving and needed money." She phoned the editor of the Chicago
Reader newspaper and convinced him he needed classical music reviews. The
rest is history.
Says Ann of her work:"I'm strictly a nonfiction person. I guess I'm still
a frustrated journalist. I'm driven to track down facts and present them in
an engaging way. For me, facts are more exciting than fiction, and I want my
readers to experience a subject as passionately as I do."
Her books cover U.S. and world history, culture, and political affairs; science
and nature; biography and grammar.
Ann has traveled the world both in her professional research and in her concern
for children and artists worldwide. Her community service has taken her as far
as Ethiopia as a volunteer on a medical mission to remote tribal areas with
no access to medical care; to Niger, where she took part in daily activities
and cultural ceremonies and donated school, medical and hygiene supplies and
as close as Chicago, where she has served Christmas dinner to the homeless.
Her IWPA activities have included participating in the annual book fairs, serving
as 2006 Communication Contest co-chair and First Amendment Chair, meeting speaker,
and mentoring, as well as winning state and national Communications Contest
awards.
Ann's longtime colleague Russell Primm, president of Editorial Directions, Inc.,
offers this tribute:
"For more than a quarter of a century, Ann Heinrichs has made the education
of young readers across the country her life's work. She has consistently shown
them time and time again through her enormous writing skills that reading is
fun and that it is the basis for a life-long pursuit of knowledge and inquiry."
It is we who are humbled as we express our appreciation of Ann's proven talent.
We nominated Ann with great pride and we wish her luck at the national COA competition
in Denver this September