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Every year around this time, The Kitchen Sisters host Bowling With Grace, our big annual community party at Mission Bowling Club in San Francisco where we honor life-long bowling savant, Amazing Grace Mulloy. Grace, who turns 99 this year, is in two senior bowling leagues and averages about 100 a game. Grace moves through the lanes sipping her signature Scotch and Soda with a green olive, sharing her bowling tips and wisdom with the crowd.  

Recently a listener sent us an article from the DCist by writer and photographer Valerie Plesch about an astonishing group of young Afghan women journalists, musicians and activists who fled their country in fear for their lives when the Taliban took over their nation — a group now living in the DC area.

Two paragraphs into the article, we knew had to record these women’s stories, especially when we read that one of the journalists, 26-year-old Taban Ibraz, had a weekly national television show, Let's Bowl, where she interviewed politicians and people of note while bowling with them in an alley in Kabul.

Bowling binds us as a community at Bowling with Grace. Bowling bound this journalist to her now shattered community in Kabul.

Special thanks to Taban Ibraz, Anaitza Walizada, Maryam Yousifi, Helal Massomi, Elham Karimi, Marika Patridge, Lori Davis, Ed James and Ajmal Subat. Thanks also to The Daily Antidote Podcast and to writer/photographer Valerie Plesch for inspiring this story and sharing her photographs with The Kitchen Sisterhood.

Valerie Plesch’s photographs and more about this story, plus an interview with Tanya Henderson, Founder and President of Mina’s List, a non-profit advancing women’s political leadership and global peace, are on our website, kitchensisters.org

Thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts, The Kaleta Doolin Foundation, The Texas Women's Foundation and listener contributions to The Kitchen Sisters Productions for the funding that makes these stories possible.

The Kitchen Sisters Present... is part of Radiotopia, an independent, story driven, carefully crafted podcast network from PRX.