2024 Winner: Kristel Alissa

Kristel Alissa is an emerging travel writer and the recipient of the 2024 Edward-Readicker-Henderson Travel Classics Memorial Scholarship. An Atlanta-based writer and content strategist, Kristel grew up in Beirut, Lebanon, before moving to the U.S. in 2023. Surviving a missile strike as a baby, her life has been marked by unexpected events. She excels in coordinating content teams, SEO, and writing. In her free time, she enjoys family time and experimenting in the kitchen. Kristel is fluent in Arabic, Armenian, French, and English.

Contestants were asked to write a 750-word essay about their home town. The Prize includes complimentary accommodations and conference fee for Travel Classics West in Scottsdale, plus a $200 stipend.

Here is an excerpt from Kristel’s winning story, MY Beirut

“I come from Bourj Hammoud, the Armenian Quarter of Beirut. My blood carries the memories of bedouins, genocide, the civil war that took my father’s leg, and now — the explosion. Yet I am not a victim or cursed as it would seem my homeland is at times. 

Beirut is a city that has been buried over and over again, and we are a people that emerge each time. For thousands of years, this has been our way. You will see Roman ruins around and beneath my city. If you were allowed to dig deeper, you would find traces of the Phoenicians. Depending on the street you walk and who is speaking, you will overhear conversations in Arabic, French, English, Armenian, and often, a combination of these tongues — some of them left behind by colonizers, some, like Armenian, by refugees in search of a new home. All of it is evidence of reinvention and resilience.”