If you love reading up on the best food and travel in the South, you’ve probably run into the work of Christiana Roussel. A full-time freelance travel and lifestyle writer, Christiana has written for a host of Birmingham-based publications and big-name periodicals like Garden & Gun. No matter which outlet she’s writing for, she’s always looking to tell a great story. Get to know this talented FACE of BHAM!
What stories do you enjoy telling the most?
First and foremost, I consider myself a storyteller, not a journalist. I’m always on the hunt for a great backstory on a person or place that people might think they already know, but don’t. I love sharing something new — the relationship a James Beard-award-winning chef has with a farmer, or a hidden gem travel destination.
I took up upland hunting a few years ago and have enjoyed exploring subjects in that world: great hunting lodges, wildlife art, game-centric meals, and all the dogs!
How did you get into travel and lifestyle journalism?
I joke that I’m able to write because my mother was an English teacher and school principal. Growing up, there was always a lot of mandatory reading and writing. And I always had a vivid imagination. In my role as the first marketing director for Whole Foods Market in Mountain Brook in 2011, I was charged with a great deal of storytelling to our customers.
This was the first Whole Foods in Alabama, and many residents were unfamiliar with the ethos behind the original iteration of that grocery concept: sustainable farming, humanely-raised cattle, etc.
One of our regular customers owned the Birmingham Weekly newspaper and asked me to write a feature for them. This was just after the BP oil spill in the Gulf that threatened the commercial viability of seafood from the region.
I wrote a story about Greene Prairie Aqua Farm, one of our vendors in Boligee, AL, who provided farm-raised shrimp from a naturally salinated aquifer in the middle of our state. I fell in love with the process of producing engaging content for readers and wanted to do more.
What’s been the highlight of your career so far?
Two immediately come to mind. The first was being sent on a travel assignment for Birmingham Home & Garden Magazine. I had never written a travel story before, and when I asked my editor, Cathy McGowin, why she had given me such a plum assignment, she smiled and replied, “I like your voice.” Before that moment, I never realized I had a specific storytelling voice. That one line from her has buoyed me ever since.
From the beginning, I had a goal of being published in Garden & Gun Magazine. I pursued a byline with that national publication for years before finally getting a “yes” for a 2019 story I wrote on the tomato pie at the now-shuttered Black Sheep Kitchen in Crestline. That professional highlight came the same month I was experiencing deep personal loss. In that moment, I felt like God was telling me, “You are going to be okay.”
Where can we find you when you’re not working?
I intentionally schedule walk-and-talks with friends at the end of the workday or join a pilates class at Club Pilates to feel connected. I love an impromptu after-work cocktail downtown, and a Saturday visit to the Pepper Place Farmers’ Market is always high on my list.
I also confess to occasionally climbing into bed mid-afternoon to read for 30 minutes just to get away from the computer screen. I like to think it jolts my creativity to read work written by other people.
What are some of your favorite things about Birmingham?
I grew up in Atlanta and lived in Nashville, Houston, and Fort Worth before landing here about two decades ago. Birmingham is a big, small town where community is everything. I love it when Miss Linda at the Crestline Pig asks about my children by name.
I love dressing up to grab a cocktail at Adiõs or dinner at Lé Fresca and catching up with downtown friends. I love lunches at Chez Fonfon and Bottega Café, where, if I am lucky, Frank or Pardis (Stitt) may pop by the table. I love picking up hostess gifts at Shoppe and The General in Forest Park and maybe getting a hug from owners Mark or Jay. I love that I can be almost anywhere in less than 15 minutes.
What’s your best piece of advice?
There’s a quote that I keep on my desk and often refer back to in work: “Make the personal universal and the universal personal.” It’s an approach to storytelling that I find incredibly effective.
If I had to offer any advice, it would be to stay curious. Continue to find wonder in the world around you. Seek connection anywhere and everywhere. A recent mantra that keeps popping into my head is “Leave room for whimsy.”
As an Enneagram three, I tend to prioritize goal-setting and tie my self-worth to achievement. If I stay in that rut, it wears me thin, and I feel depleted. But I have learned that if I leave room (in my schedule, my brain, my heart) for serendipity, that’s the stuff life is made of.
Lightning Round!
Three things you can’t live without: I joke that there will always be money in the budget for my therapist, Botox, and Pilates.
What’s on your bedside table? Photos of my kids (Jack, 21, and Amanda, 26), the requisite iPhone charger, a single framed feather, and a stack of books in progress.
Last great book you read: I tore through Barbara Kingsolver’s Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer recently.
Last great meal at a local restaurant: This is like choosing a favorite child — impossible! Small briny oysters or a piece of grilled fish from Bayonet or Automatic Seafood will always make me happy. I recently 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 the most beautiful iteration of surf-and-turf I’ve had in a while.
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