Its Perfect Container: PN Interviews Krys Malcolm Belc

Passages North’s Jane Wagar chatted with Neutrino Short-Short Prize judge Krys Malcolm Belc about flash, contests, and natural lighting.

Passages North: You have been both an shorts editor and managing editor for Passages North, and are now a reader for Split Lip Magazine. What do you look for when selecting a short for publication?

Krys Malcolm Belc: This is perhaps a somewhat evasive answer, but the key thing that makes a successful short short to me is that the piece is meant to be the size it is. It’s a feeling I get when I read a short work, like that it arrived in its perfect container. There are some beautifully written pieces that feel like 4,000 word short stories crammed into 750 words, and there are also some 150 word micros I wish could be books. Great flash writers know that there’s a great difference between a 250 word and 1,000 word story and they know when to use each size.

PN: Do you often apply to contests? How have they helped your career?

KMB: I wouldn’t say I often apply to contests because I don’t often feel like I have something I believe in so much that I want to spend money on sending it out. Occasionally, though, I get really motivated by a contest deadline to polish a piece and send it out. And even if my piece doesn’t win, I know that I wouldn’t have gotten a final draft without that deadline.

I have had a few great experiences with contests. My chapbook of flash nonfiction, In Transit, didn’t win The Cupboard Pamphlet’s contest but was an editor’s selection and I have loved working with the press so much, and I cherish the product they created. Sometimes I will send to a contest if I really admire the judge and their projects. So I submitted an essay to Redivider’s Beacon Street Prize a few years back because I saw that Hanif Abdurraqib was judging and I was teaching his book of essays to my students. I was so thrilled to win and still get pumped that Hanif saw my work, let alone chose it! And the biggest great thing that came out of contests is that in 2018 I sent a flash essay to Pigeon Pages’s flash contest because it was being judged by Alexander Chee, and his book How to Write an Autobiographical Novel was so important to me, and I won! Pigeon Pages editors provided great edits and they’ve really supported me. I also met my agent, Ashley Lopez, because she’s one of the Pigeon Pages editors. Tldr; I send to contests rarely but I’ve had great fortune when I have.

PN: We hear you have a memoir coming out with Counterpoint Press called The Natural Mother of the Child. What can you tell us about it?

KMB: Yes, I’m so excited to have a book coming out in 2021. I think the Passages North contest submitters would be pleased to know that it’s a very fragmented memoir, and that a number of short sections were published as flash essays. I hope that readers experience little moments with my little essays, and that the larger effect of having the pieces of my life in one physical object has an amplifying effect.

PN: We miss you so much! So, selfishly: what do you miss most about working on Passages North?

KMB: It is so hard to pick just one thing I miss about Passages North! I think my time in quarantine here in my house in Philadelphia has strongly influenced my answer, which is that I loved the community vibe of working in-person on a literary journal, and I miss it terribly. Working on Split Lip Magazine as memoir editor is so wonderful and they are a great community, but I do wish we had the privilege of sitting around a table eating donuts together, and we don’t, as all our work is done remotely. My time spent in the Passages office was something I looked forward to each weekend. I loved seeing the undergraduate interns and the Editor-in-Chief, Jen Howard, so much. Hearing in-person arguments for accepting a poem or essay or story is an invaluable experience that has shaped me as a reader and writer. I also miss those absolutely lovely windows and having a naturally lit workplace, all that bright sun reflecting off huge piles of Michigan snow while we talked about pieces.