Assalam-o-Alekum dear friends!

We're really excited to be sharing some footage from our first, of hopefully many, PenTales salon nights in Pakistan. Our friend Jeanny Gering invited young, creative Pakastanis to a local cafe in Lahore to swap tales and songs on Love and Heartbreak.
Of that experience, she writes:

"Public life is restricted in Lahore but there are at least two sure realities about the place. One is a fine layer of fear covering everyone’s minds like smog and dust coat the city`s air. Random bomb blasts are part of everyday life, creating a constant atmosphere of anxiety. Beyond that, social segregation between the sexes deters half the population from moving about freely. The other reality is that, like all places, there are stories everywhere, though the stories here stay mostly behind closed doors.

It is in this setting that I launched PenTales Lahore this past June. I invited a handful of creative Pakistanis to Cafe Bol to share their stories, poems and songs on the PenTales theme “Love and Heartbreak”. A gathering of this kind is an exception to Lahore’s typically bleak social calendar. I was excited at the prospect of hearing the personal, human stories that are all too often neglected when we hear about a place of conflict like Pakistan..." READ ON.

Check out our youtube channel to take a trip around the world with PenTales... even, if you're stuck at the office. Oh, and if you've got your own Love and Heartbreak story to share, email it to writepentales@gmail.com (text/image/video) and we'll make sure to include it in our growing encyclopedia of stories.

Created in New York City by two childhood friends who've always loved to swap tales, PenTales empowers people to share stories (in photography, illustration, writing, audio, and video) on the topics that unite us all. We aim to create nothing short of a Global Encyclopedia of Stories – a true catalogue of the human experience, one perspective at a time.

©2011 PenTales New York NY