The Kitchen Sisters are seeking photographs, videos, films and footage for “The Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra” a new multimedia musical collaboration. We’re looking for imagery that chronicles and evokes the world of girls and the women they become. Both documentary footage and more abstract, impressionistic imagery. We are especially looking for imagery of Tuareg women in the Sahara, Irish Gypsy Travellers, images and film that evoke girlhood fantasy, science fiction and friendship, and childhood dreams and aspirations. Things that are public domain or that you have the rights to. If you have anything you’d like us to see, send links to kitchen@kitchensisters.org or leave them in the comments below. Thank you for joining us in this collaboration.

All best,
Davia & Nikki

There were two big inspirations behind The Hidden World of Girls, the obituary and story of Lula Mae Hardaway, Stevie Wonder’s mother, and the photograph taken by Shadi Ghadiran that we have used as our banner for this blog.

Today, on International Women’s Day, we present this portrait of her work.

“One Winter Story” is an unprecedented glimpse into the male-dominated world of big-wave surfing from an unusual and seldom seen perspective – a woman’s. This hour-long film explores the nature of fear and faith through the experience big-wave surf pioneer, Sarah Gerhardt. “One Winter Story” is a personal documentary that follows Sarah as she surfs Maverick’s, a monstrous wave that breaks in the freezing, shark-infested waters off Half Moon Bay in Northern California.

Sarah’s journey to Maverick’s was anything but easy. Surfing became her escape from the hardships of home and faith became the guiding force in her life. Sarah is a genuine big-wave pioneer, the first woman to surf what is one of the largest waves in the world. In the years she has been surfing the wave, Sarah has discovered that although she has many limitations, Maverick’s allows her to live as though she doesn’t have any, bringing her peace as she finds her place in the lineup, and in the world. Also featured in the film are big wave surfers Mike Gerhardt, Ken Bradshaw, and Jenny Useldinger.

Check out the trailer below. More information about the film here.

The multimedia series is produced by photojournalist Sue Jaye Johnson and radio producer Marianne McCune. The project includes a series of radio portraits on WNYC and NPR, a live event at WNYC’s Greene Space featuring women boxers, and a six-page photo essay in the New York Times Magazine.

Take a look at these videos and slide shows on the New York Times site. They’re incredible. And visit wnyc.org and npr.org beginning this Sunday for more information about the radio programs.

“She’s a force of nature…”

It was hot. It was really hot. She was eight and a half months pregnant and about to start a new season of 30 Rock when she took the time to join The Kitchen Sisters in a sweltering studio in New York City to narrate and host The Hidden World of Girls. Tina Fey, groundbreaking writer and comedian, off-beat champion of women, added her voice to power these illuminating stories of girls and the women they become.

It was your generosity and support that made these two hour-long NPR Tina Fey Specials and the 30-part Hidden World of Girls series possible. Your support helped share these stories with 22 million listeners around the world and helped give voice to a movement making deep change in the lives of women and girls.

We write to wish you well at year’s end and to thank you. And we ask for your continued support for the mission of The Kitchen Sisters—our radio stories, documentary work, and our education and internship program.

Stories are tinder. They can light a fire. As we begin a new year creating radio stories and multimedia documentaries we are more committed than ever to the telling of stories that hold promise of change, democracy, hope and imagination.

In the coming year we begin a new NPR series, Hidden Kitchens World, global kitchen stories of land, community and food. We have just received an NEA matching grant for this new collaboration and we need your contribution to meet this match. We will also be developing a highly interactive Hidden Kitchens phone app to further spread and collect these stories and create new ways for people to collaborate with us from around the world. Crowdsourcing stories has long been a Kitchen Sisters tradition and continues to be at the heart of our work.

During this past year we began some new collaborations–with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where we chronicled their “Women Who Rock” exhibit and began documenting the lives of pioneering women musicians; with The Believer magazine’s annual music issue; with illustrator Wendy MacNaughton; and Pop-Up, the live-magazine phenomenon that showcases some of the country’s most interesting writers, filmmakers, photographers and radio producers, where we sneak previewed two upcoming stories, “Show the Girls the Snakes” and an excerpt from “Atomic Wine: A Trace of Bomb in the Glass” from our new Hidden Kitchens World project.

Much is on the horizon. Along with working on more stories of women and girls, we are writing a new book, Notes From the Kitchen Sisterhood: The Power of Storytelling, and producing our first audio book, 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering written and read by Alice Waters and Friends. We are also collaborating with Obscura Digital and the Cabrillo Festival for Contemporary Music on “The Hidden World of Girls: Stories for Orchestra,” a multimedia evening of new music, radio, and images in July 2012.

All this comes to pass with your collaboration and support. The year ahead is a rugged one. Funding for public radio projects, especially the work of independents, is deeply threatened. Your participation is vital and so appreciated. There is barely one of you who receives this letter who has not contributed a story, an image, a contact, air miles, music, cheese, financial support or encouragement.

We thank you deeply for this creative collaboration and the power it gives us to build community through storytelling. All of your donations are tax-deductible. You contribution, no matter what size, makes it possible to do this work.

We send you and your family wishes for peace and possibilities in the complex and shining year ahead.

Forward ever,

Davia & Nikki
The Kitchen Sisters

Illustrations by Wendy MacNaughton

“Hi, my name is Lacey and I want to tell the story of how I fell in love with my best friend…”

The film features experimental videos made by Woodman, excerpts from her journals and candid interviews with her parents, who are also artists.

Watch the trailer for the film here.

“I’m proud of her, but at the same time I miss her too much…”

Sound-rich, evocative, funny, and powerful–stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secret identities. Of women who crossed a line, blazed a trail, changed the tide. These specials are produced by Peabody Award-winning producers, The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva), in collaboration with NPR reporters and foreign correspondents, independent producers and listeners around the world.

You can listen to and download the specials here:

Hour One:

The Hidden World of Girls with Tina Fey-Hour 1 by The Kitchen Sisters

Hour Two:

The Hidden World of Girls with Tina Fey-Hour 2 by The Kitchen Sisters

UPDATE: Podcast versions of the specials are available here (link will open in iTunes).