ALL writers have stories to tell. They tell stories that mimic life, often in all its fullness, because life itself is a story. There is no life that is not a story, and it is not a story if it has no life.

The stories in Songs Sprung from Native Soils: More Conversations with Eight Mindanao Writers (Xavier University Press, 394 pages, 2019), edited by prize-winning poet Ricardo M. de Ungria, are no different — except that these are not fictional. These are nonfiction stories narrated in interviews with eight acclaimed writers who either hail from or have spent years living in Mindanao.