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MoarBooks’ ‘Chasing Tales’ talks delve into stories and storytelling


The official poster. All photos courtesy of MoarBooks
“Chasing Tales” is a series of talks about stories and storytelling, put together by local indie publisher MoarBooks. Their first talk was about Fantasy fiction, with the speakers being Eliza Victoria, Carlo C. Flordeliza, and Erika M. Carreon.

MoarBooks is made up of Wina Puangco, Nico Pascual, and Trizha Ko. Puangco and Pascual kindly granted GMA News Online an email interview.  

Q: What was the vision behind Chasing Tales? What do you want to accomplish?

The main vision was to provide an avenue for people interested in literature to go and have this desire for storytelling addressed and encouraged. While there are a lot of casual book clubs and such, I feel like most of the time, it's [a case of] the blind leading the blind. “I think”, “I feel”—storytelling is about discovery, but so little of it is guesswork. Here we bring you one established speaker and two speakers on-the-rise—so to speak—who will give you their take on certain elements in fiction.

The goal is to get people to keep telling stories and to tell stories well. Language is a crucial part of development on a personal and cultural level: it doesn't just matter that you tell a story, but that you learn to do it in the best way possible. I feel like a lot of our problems as a nation stem from not being able to tell stories properly. Why do the masses associate white skin with affluence? Why is it a bad thing to be ambitious in Philippine culture? Just a story told poorly or without much thought. We want to create a community for storytelling and if that (and I know it will) has an effect that ripples through culture and society, then great.

Q: Why start with Fantasy fiction?

Because while it may seem like the most closed off genre of fiction which caters to different subgroups (Lord of the Rings freaks, Potter-heads), it is arguably the most mainstream of genres.

Everyone has a fantasy: to a certain extent, all fiction involves fantasizing (although by no means is it all Fantasy fiction). Also, the first types of widely influential stories were fantasy stories: myths about the gods, theories on heaven and hell, etc. Oddly enough, it is also the most current genre in which graphic novels are making a comeback (most of which are set in or at least primarily involve other worlds).

Lastly, Filipino fiction is also steeped in folklore. It’s in the things we do everyday, the things we don’t say, the wood we knock on.

The crowd during the first Chasing Tales talk.
Q: For literature lovers who weren't able to attend the event, can you tell us a bit about what was discussed at the talk?

We’ll be uploading snippets of the videos soon, but just to whet your appetites (and to pander to the FOMO—Fear Of Missing Out—that I know people who didn’t go are feeling right now), we talked about everything fantasy-related from Tolkien’s fairy stories to Kelly Link’s “Stone Animals”/”Magic for Beginners” to Magic Realism and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. We had a pretty awesome set and a pretty great audience, too. People ended up staying up until almost midnight.

Q: Are you only going to do fiction talks?

Since primarily Chasing Tales is about storytelling, we plan to keep it close to the prose categories; although, we’re also exploring other mixed-prose-mediums like prose poetry and spoken word. But we aren’t willing to deviate fully from prose just yet as there is still much ground to cover. We are also looking into Creative Non-Fiction.

But if the question this means to ask is something along the lines of: are we going to do a movie night for Chasing Tales? Or are we going to have a comics night, then probably not; this is for no other reason than a difference in medium. Also, there are already other great avenues for these other genres and I feel like they could do better than us in that respect. That part of the discussion [has already been] primarily taken care of. But rest assured, we will keep an open mind for any of our future projects.

Q: How many of these talks do you project you’ll have?

As many as there are stories being told and stories being written every day—or until we feel like we can’t do it anymore. Storytelling is something that evolves. The book is never going to be shut unless the book is destroyed and even that would be a story in itself. There’s so much to talk about and so much to learn. It’s a labor of love, I guess.

Q: What will the others be about and whom will you be inviting to talk?

We can’t talk about the speakers until they agree. But we’re looking into Prose Poetry next: poetic language in narrative form. If you think about it, to a certain extent this is language mutating again: the opposite of the Greek epics which were narrative language in poetic form. Anyway. Yeah. We’re thinking of doing that next.

Q: When can we start pre-ordering tickets for the next event?

Most probably by mid- or the end of September. We’ll let you know through our Facebook page. Keep reading and see you guys there! — BM, GMA News