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Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever
256 pages, Hardcover
Published August 14, 2007
About the author
Susan Warren
17 books4 followersSusan Warren is Deputy Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal in Dallas, Texas. She writes and edits news and feature stories related to oil and gas, discount retailers and airlines. The Journal also gives her freedom to pursue stories about other things she finds interesting for its famed "middle column" feature on its front page. She has written on such wide-ranging topics as people who buy Silly Putty by the pound, the dangers of frying turkeys in boiling oil, and the spring ritual of dewberry picking in the South. Backyard Giants grew out of Ms. Warren's October 2005 story about the trials of growing giant pumpkins.
Ms. Warren's roots remain firmly in Texas, where she was raised one of eight children in the oil town of Houston. She began her journalism career at the age of 8 when her father, tired of her constant questions, convinced her "Susan" spelled backwards was "Nuisance." She worked her way through college with various jobs at a liquor distributor, a produce wholesaler, an oil and gas company, and a law firm. She worked one year for the Houston Post (now defunct) and nine years for the Houston Chronicle where she was posted in 1991 to the Middle East for the Persian Gulf War and its aftermath. After completing a Reuters Fellowship in international studies at England's Oxford University in 1992 and 1993, she joined the Dallas bureau of The Wall Street Journal.
Outside the office, Ms. Warren spends as much time as possible in her garden. North Texas has one of the more challenging gardening climates in the country: scorching hot and dry in the summer, and just cold enough in the winter to kill off anything that might survive the summer. She takes special pride in finding plants hardy enough to endure the weather, and to thrive under her survival-of-the-fittest growing style.
She learned to love gardening from her mother, and how to tell stories from her father. Now she lives with her husband, Tony, in Arlington, Texas, where she teaches gardening and storytelling to her two daughters, Christina and Amy, when they are willing.
Ms. Warren's roots remain firmly in Texas, where she was raised one of eight children in the oil town of Houston. She began her journalism career at the age of 8 when her father, tired of her constant questions, convinced her "Susan" spelled backwards was "Nuisance." She worked her way through college with various jobs at a liquor distributor, a produce wholesaler, an oil and gas company, and a law firm. She worked one year for the Houston Post (now defunct) and nine years for the Houston Chronicle where she was posted in 1991 to the Middle East for the Persian Gulf War and its aftermath. After completing a Reuters Fellowship in international studies at England's Oxford University in 1992 and 1993, she joined the Dallas bureau of The Wall Street Journal.
Outside the office, Ms. Warren spends as much time as possible in her garden. North Texas has one of the more challenging gardening climates in the country: scorching hot and dry in the summer, and just cold enough in the winter to kill off anything that might survive the summer. She takes special pride in finding plants hardy enough to endure the weather, and to thrive under her survival-of-the-fittest growing style.
She learned to love gardening from her mother, and how to tell stories from her father. Now she lives with her husband, Tony, in Arlington, Texas, where she teaches gardening and storytelling to her two daughters, Christina and Amy, when they are willing.
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