The Kitchen Sisters
The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) are producers of the duPont-Columbia Award-winning, NPR series, Hidden Kitchens, and two Peabody Award-winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project. Hidden Kitchens, heard on Morning Edition, explores the world of secret, unexpected, below-the-radar cooking across America—how communities come together through food. The series inspired Hidden Kitchens: Stories, Recipes, and More from NPR's The Kitchen Sisters, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year that was also nominated for a James Beard Award for Best Writing on Food. The Hidden Kitchens audio book, narrated by Academy Award winner, Frances McDormand, received a 2006 Audie Award.
Hidden Kitchens Texas, an hour-long nationwide broadcast special, narrated by Willie Nelson & Robin Wright Penn, premieres in the summer of 2007.
The Kitchen Sisters' groundbreaking national radio collaborations, in partnership with Jay Allison, bring together independent producers, artists, writers, archivists, grandmothers, NASCAR drivers, butchers, public radio listeners, and many others throughout the country to create richly layered, highly produced radio documentaries that chronicle untold stories of American culture and traditions.
Other noted Kitchen Sisters stories include: "Waiting for Joe DiMaggio;" "The Nights of Edith Piaf;" "WHER: 1000 Beautiful Watts;" "Cigar Stories: El Lector, He Who Reads;" "Carmen Miranda: The Life and Times of the Brazilian Bombshell;" "Guillermo Cabrera Infante: Memories of an Invented City;" "Tupperware;" "The Road Ranger;" and "War and Separation." The Kitchen Sisters began their radio lives producing a weekly live radio program in the late 70s on KUSP-FM in Santa Cruz, California. Their radio documentaries have been featured on NPR's All Things Considered and Morning Edition, the BBC, Audible, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Smithsonian, California Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, Soundprint, PRX, and are now heard as NPR podcasts.
The Kitchen Sisters are also involved in educating and training new voices for public media in an imaginative, artistic and creative approach to storytelling. They teach at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and give presentations and provide training at universities, festivals, workshops, radio stations, public forums and events throughout the country. They also train and work with interns, college students, and youth radio apprentices and participate in the life of the public radio community throughout the country.
In addition to producing radio, Davia Nelson is also a casting director and screenwriter. She lives in San Francisco. Nikki Silva is also a museum curator and exhibit consultant. She lives with her family on a commune in Santa Cruz, California.
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The Kitchen Sisters explore the saga of a Texas corn chip and C.E. Doolin, the can-do visionary behind it. Doolin, who envisioned Fritos as a side dish, never imagined anyone would consume an entire king size bag. The story of the Frito is the latest in the "Hidden Kitchens" series.
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NASA's Johnson Space Center invited The Kitchen Sisters to visit its "hidden kitchen." On the eve of NASA's scheduled launch of space shuttle Atlantis, The Kitchen Sisters present a brief history of space food.
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On the eve of Mozart's 251st birthday, The Kitchen Sisters take us to Vienna, to Mozart's Hidden Kitchen: "The Tables of New Crowned Hope." The festival honored the composer's free-thinking philosophy, innovation and radical music.
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The Kitchen Sisters visit the 21st annual Farm Aid benefit concert in Camden, N.J., for some turkey-stuffin', potato-mashin' music and some deep stories of an endangered tradition — the American family farm.
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At a truck stop between Dallas and Waco, Texas, a little energy revolution has begun. Truckers at Carl's Corner fill up on BioWillie, biodiesel named after singer Willie Nelson. The fuel is made from farm crops and recycled restaurant grease.
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Texas Icehouses — part town hall, part tavern, icehouses have been a South Texas tradition since the 1920s. Once a vital part of everyday local culture, a cornerstone of every neighborhood in San Antonio and Houston, they are a rapidly diminishing, endangered species. A journey into this Mexican, German, Tejano, Anglo tradition.
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In honor of Mother's Day, The Kitchen Sisters linger in the room in the house where families gather and children are fed, where all good parties begin and end. The room where the best stories are told.
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The revelation that Brazilian cab drivers in San Francisco were getting a taste of home at an off-the-radar restaurant sparked the interest of radio producers The Kitchen Sisters. Soon, they were making midnight runs to Janete's Cabyard Kitchen.
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The new book by The Kitchen Sisters charts their ongoing series of reports exploring the world of street-corner cooking, colorful kitchen rituals and visionaries, legendary meals and eating traditions.
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One of the most clandestine kitchens ever was created by an inmate in solitary confinement in Louisiana's Angola State Pentitentiary. Over three decades, Robert "King" Wilkerson perfected a recipe for pralines, which he made in a makeshift kitchen in his tiny cell.