Meet Birmingham Travel & Lifestyle Writer Christiana Roussel

If you like studying up on one of the best meals and journey within the South, you’ve in all probability run into the work of Christiana Roussel. A full-time freelance journey and life-style author, Christiana has written for a bunch of Birmingham-based publications and big-name periodicals like Garden & Gun. No matter which outlet she’s writing for, she’s all the time trying to inform a fantastic story. Get to know this proficient FACE of BHAM!

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What tales do you take pleasure in telling probably the most?

First and foremost, I contemplate myself a storyteller, not a journalist. I’m all the time on the hunt for a fantastic backstory on an individual or place that individuals may suppose they already know, however don’t. I like sharing one thing new — the connection a James Beard-award-winning chef has with a farmer, or a hidden gem journey vacation spot.

I took up upland searching just a few years in the past and have loved exploring topics in that world: nice searching lodges, wildlife artwork, game-centric meals, and all of the canines!

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How did you get into journey and life-style journalism?

I joke that I’m in a position to write as a result of my mom was an English trainer and college principal. Growing up, there was all the time lots of obligatory studying and writing. And I all the time had a vivid creativeness. In my function as the primary advertising and marketing director for Whole Foods Market in Mountain Brook in 2011, I used to be charged with quite a lot of storytelling to our clients.

This was the primary Whole Foods in Alabama, and plenty of residents have been unfamiliar with the ethos behind the unique iteration of that grocery idea: sustainable farming, humanely-raised cattle, and so on.

One of our common clients owned the Birmingham Weekly newspaper and requested me to jot down a characteristic for them. This was simply after the BP oil spill within the Gulf that threatened the business viability of seafood from the area.

I wrote a narrative about Greene Prairie Aqua Farm, one in every of our distributors in Boligee, AL, who offered farm-raised shrimp from a naturally salinated aquifer in the course of our state. I fell in love with the method of manufacturing partaking content material for readers and needed to do extra.

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What’s been the spotlight of your profession to this point?

Two instantly come to thoughts. The first was being despatched on a journey task for Birmingham Home & Garden Magazine. I had by no means written a journey story earlier than, and after I requested my editor, Cathy McGowin, why she had given me such a plum task, she smiled and replied, “I like your voice.” Before that second, I by no means realized I had a particular storytelling voice. That one line from her has buoyed me ever since.

From the start, I had a purpose of being printed in Garden & Gun Magazine. I pursued a byline with that nationwide publication for years earlier than lastly getting a “yes” for a 2019 story I wrote on the tomato pie on the now-shuttered Black Sheep Kitchen in Crestline. That skilled spotlight got here the identical month I used to be experiencing deep private loss. In that second, I felt like God was telling me, “You are going to be okay.”

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Where can we discover you if you’re not working?

I deliberately schedule walk-and-talks with mates on the finish of the workday or be part of a pilates class at Club Pilates to really feel linked. I like an impromptu after-work cocktail downtown, and a Saturday go to to the Pepper Place Farmers’ Market is all the time excessive on my checklist.

I additionally confess to often climbing into mattress mid-afternoon to learn for half-hour simply to get away from the pc display screen. I prefer to suppose it jolts my creativity to learn work written by different individuals.

What are a few of your favourite issues about Birmingham?

I grew up in Atlanta and lived in Nashville, Houston, and Fort Worth earlier than touchdown right here about 20 years in the past. Birmingham is a giant, small city the place group is every thing. I find it irresistible when Miss Linda on the Crestline Pig asks about my kids by identify.

I like dressing as much as seize a cocktail at Adiõs or dinner at Lé Fresca and catching up with downtown mates. I like lunches at Chez Fonfon and Bottega Café, the place, if I’m fortunate, Frank or Pardis (Stitt) might pop by the desk. I like selecting up hostess items at Shoppe and The General in Forest Park and possibly getting a hug from house owners Mark or Jay. I like that I will be virtually anyplace in lower than quarter-hour.

What’s your greatest piece of recommendation?

There’s a quote that I carry on my desk and sometimes refer again to in work: “Make the personal universal and the universal personal.” It’s an method to storytelling that I discover extremely efficient.

If I needed to supply any recommendation, it might be to remain curious. Continue to seek out marvel on the earth round you. Seek connection anyplace and all over the place. A current mantra that retains popping into my head is “Leave room for whimsy.”

As an Enneagram three, I are likely to prioritize goal-setting and tie my self-worth to achievement. If I keep in that rut, it wears me skinny, and I really feel depleted. But I’ve realized that if I go away room (in my schedule, my mind, my coronary heart) for serendipity, that’s the stuff life is made from.

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Lightning Round!

Three issues you possibly can’t reside with out: I joke that there’ll all the time be cash within the price range for my therapist, Botox, and Pilates.

What’s in your bedside desk? Photos of my youngsters (Jack, 21, and Amanda, 26), the requisite iPhone charger, a single framed feather, and a stack of books in progress.

Last nice guide you learn: I tore via Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer just lately.

Last nice meal at an area restaurant: This is like selecting a favourite youngster — unimaginable! Small briny oysters or a bit of grilled fish from Bayonet or Automatic Seafood will all the time make me blissful. I just lately revisited Little Betty Steak Bar, and the wagyu program Chef Kyle Biddy is spearheading is off the chain. He added caviar to a plate of carpaccio that was probably the most stunning iteration of surf-and-turf I’ve had shortly.

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Southern girls are doing outstanding issues. Meet extra of them in our FACES archives!