Regional Gardening Northeast

Irene Virag is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who left the newsroom for the garden path. A breast cancer survivor, she sees the organic garden she has tended on Long Island for 20 years as a metaphor for hope and renewal. She won the Pulitzer as a reporter for Newsday and was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard. She is a multiple winner of the New York Newswomen’s award for column and feature writing. Now a freelancer, she was honored by the American Horticultural Society for inspirational garden writing. A Fellow of the Garden Writers Association, she has won its Gold Award for both newspaper and magazine writing. She is a Master Gardener, the author of Gardening on Long Island and a professor of journalism at Stony Brook University. Her website is www.irenevirag.com.