Stephanie Suesan Smith, Ph.D.
Purpose of site: To explain how to vegetable garden and showcase my writing.
Born in Dallas, Texas, I have lived in Texas all but seven months as a baby and three years as a teenager. I currently live in Dallas, Texas.
Learning to Garden
“Can I help, please, Daddy,” the eight year old Stephanie begged.
“Yes, you can help me plant my onions.” said her father. They both went out to the garden plot that had been prepared to start planting for the spring. The father showed Stephanie how to properly plant onions. Her “help” slowed him down considerably, but eventually they were all planted. However, the onions were not the only things to grow from this experience.
Stephanie started vegetable gardening from then on. In 2001, she became a Master Gardener. In 2014, Stephanie was named the best master gardener in the county. Because she is a master gardener, she understands the work that goes into growing things. She has the knowledge of gardening to help businesses in the garden industry write effective copy to sell their products.
Learning to Write
“Mom, Mom, look,” the excited author exclaimed. “Dog Fancy bought my article on treating bites and stings in dogs. This is the issue it appears in. Isn’t that cool?”
“Yes, dear, now you are officially an author. Congratulations.” said the Mom.
That article was the first printed article Stephanie had done, but she had written many other things as well. She wrote reports and articles while in graduate school and learned how to write effectively then. Her dissertation was another big writing project. After graduating from college with her Ph.D. she continued to write nonfiction that was published in a variety of places.
My Niche
After becoming a master gardener, I began to specialize in writing about gardening topics. In 2010, I started writing for the web when I established a blog on how to grow vegetables. Writing regularly for the blog improved my writing and taught me how to write tightly because people would not read long blog posts on vegetables. That blog also taught me how to write to please my audience as well as the search engines.
I use all of my experiences to write interesting, informative articles for the general public or for a more scholarly demographic. I have been published in consumer magazines, on websites, and in peer reviewed journals. I have also written more technical reports than I can count.
