New writing FACTION Guest Editor CAROL ANN DUFFY introduces her pick of 'factional' poetry and prose BEFORE I agreed to choose the new writing for this issue of Mslexia, I hadn’t heard of the term ‘faction’. Although not defined in any of my dictionaries, it seemed an easy enough word to work out: a clear fusion of the words ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ that made something new. So I must look for writing which was fictional (not real) based on a fact or facts (real) and which was, in itself, something new. So far, so tentative. But the fiction part of it worried me. I write poetry and, although I’ve recently been writing some children’s fairy tales (‘Rumplestiltskin’ and other Grimm Tales, Faber and Faber), the very idea of writing a short story or, worse still, a novel seems hugely less feasible to me than applying to join the Spice Girls (as Rhyming Spice?) or being helped up Everest by a Ghurka. I expected that the bulk of the faction submissions would be poems. But I was wrong. So it was that, cradling in both arms a pile of short stories roughly the weight of a pair of newborn twins, I came to wonder why I had been chosen for this factional task. The sly sound of the dog chewing my reading copy of The World’s Wife provided the answer. For the complete essay, and for Carol Ann's' full selection of 'factional' poetry and prose, read issue 8 • Subscribe! Read a poem chosen by Carol Ann Duffy: Two queens by Rosie Lugosi For more on CAROL ANN DUFFY, go to www.contemporarywriters.com
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