A taste for memory

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What began as a fun hobby for writer, archivist and TikTok influencer Rosie Grant (’12) has turned into a viral series of videos and a cookbook featuring recipes found on gravestones.

Grant, who double majored in English and Media Arts and Design at JMU, said her studies taught her to consider a story from many different angles. This practice helped her build a following on TikTok making the recipes she finds in cemeteries, bringing them to the gravestone sites and leveraging those videos into her first book, To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes. She recently appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show to promote the book, which features 40 recipes that honor families' loved ones as well as information on how to save and document your own family recipes.

“I find cemeteries to be beautiful places, and it is really enjoyable to be able to walk through graveyards and then tell a story about a person behind each stone,” said Grant, outreach and marketing manager at UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. “The visuals [in the book] catch people’s attention, but then the story itself is what kind of sticks with people.”

Though her experience posting on TikTok and writing a cookbook was an unexpected turn, Grant says she might not have pursued these pathways without the lessons she learned while at JMU. Her SMAD degree provided her with technical communication skills, including the basics of social media. Through her Creative Writing minor, she took a food-writing class, learning how food connects to everything. After graduating, she went on to write feature stories for Redstar magazine in China.

Later, while pursuing a master’s degree in Library Information Science from the University of Maryland, Grant interned in the archives of the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. That’s when she started her TikTok account, @ghostlyarchive, to document the experience. The account eventually led her to her first recipe, which she found etched in a gravestone.

Grant created and maintained a spreadsheet with information about each gravestone story, and once it reached about 20 video concepts, editors reached out and suggested making these recipes into a cookbook.

While researching her book, Grant contacted the families of the deceased to ask about their loved ones and the recipes on their gravestone. For each interview, she either traveled to where the family members lived or interviewed them remotely. “Some of the interviews were conducted via phone, Zoom, email, Instagram direct message or Facebook message, depending on what the families preferred,” she said. “That’s the process to get to the 40 recipes that are featured at the end.”

“There’s quite a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation for getting to [places like] Alaska and the Midwest and Canada,” Grant continued. “So, in some cases, it’s three years to prepare, and in others, I meet with the families, and we’ll put together a bunch of compilations, so it’s just a lot of documenting. And then the social media side is maybe a small sliver of all the documenting that happens on these research trips.”

Since publishing her book, she’s learned of more recipes from around the world. “I have new gravestones that have come out of the woodwork. There’s one — the first European gravestone recipe that I just learned about — which is in Amsterdam. So, I need to find out more about this person, contact their family and maybe do a trip to Amsterdam. Same for anyone else around the world. If I learn about them and can connect with the families, I’m looking into doing some sort of a death certificate.”

Grant recently appeared on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” to promote her new book.

When Grant is thinking of a way to blend recipes, storytelling and history into her content, she asks herself what she finds interesting about the idea. “Some things resonate with some people that wouldn’t with others, but there’s always more to a story than a one-minute video. Traveling, cooking and interviewing people really gave me a nice context that I then was able to visualize. It’s been the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever gotten to be a part of. I feel very lucky.”

Grant’s recent appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show was her second time on the show. Her debut was an early look at the project and more focused on her TikTok. She has also signed with an agent on a second book, which she said might explore how people process grief and how food and grief coincide.

“I will probably take a breather and then start researching for that,” Grant said.