The Kitchen Sisters Present

Fish Fries, political BBQs, family reunions — during the 1930s writers were paid by the government to chronicle local food, eating customs and recipes across the United States. America Eats, a WPA project, sent writers like Nelson Algren, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Stetson Kennedy out to document America’s relationship with food during the Great Depression.When we were searching for Hidden Kitchens and stories about how people come together through food we opened up a phone line on NPR and asked the nation for their ideas. Mark Kurlansky, author of Choice Cuts: Food Writing from Around the World and Throughout History told us about America Eats, a federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) program in the 1930s that sent writers throughout the country to document foodways.Each region had its own America Eats team. Their writings, photographs and even some scripts for a proposed weekly radio program are tucked away in collections around the country — at the New York Municipal Archive, the Mississipp