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Kitchen Sisters Win Gold Medal
Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, the Kitchen Sisters.
"Hidden Kitchens Texas," a one-hour radio documentary narrated by Willie Nelson and produced by the Kitchen Sisters in cooperation with National Pubic Radio affiliate KUT Austin, won a gold world medal at the 2008 International Radio Broadcasting Awards sponsored by the New York Festivals. "Hidden Kitchens Texas" explores the hidden world of Texas cooking, including cowboy kitchens, icehouses, oil-barrel barbecues, Galveston Bay oystermen, a car-wash kitchen in El Paso, and more. Humanities Texas awarded the project a grant of $9,755 in the fall of 2006.
Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, known as the Kitchen Sisters, began producing a weekly live radio program in the late 1970s in Santa Cruz, California. Their radio documentaries have been featured on National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Smithsonian, California Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, Soundprint, and others. Stories featured on their Hidden Kitchens series, heard on NPR's Morning Edition, have included "The Birth of Rice-a-Roni," "Boudin and Broncos: The Angola Prison Rodeo," "The Sheepherders Ball: Hidden Basque Kitchens," "Kibbe at the Crossroads: Lebanese Cooking in the Mississippi Delta," "The Birth of the Frito," and "Texas Icehouses."
The judges for the radio broadcasting awards included experts from the United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Entries were judged on production values, organization, presentation, creativity, and use of the medium. The awards were presented at a gala in New York City on June 19.