The awkwardness is obvious if you imagine hearing one in conversation. No one has ever said to you, “A sophomore at Cornell, my niece is coming home for Christmas,” or “Sixty-six years old, my wife is an incredible cook.” Either sentence, if spoken, would sound almost comical, as though the speaker were struggling to learn English. (You wouldn’t use one in an e-mail or a text to a friend, either.) Yet, if you were writing an obituary for your college’s alumni magazine, let’s say, you wouldn’t hesitate: “A standout schoolboy athlete, he ran his family’s door-and-window business."

--David Owen, The New Yorker, "The Objectively Objectionable Grammatical Pet Peeve"

N.B. A number of writers claim that there is no such thing as a bad story. I contend that there is certainly such a thing as bad writing, which can, indeed, lead to the creation of a bad story.