Michelle Willms
Writer and Editor
Memoir
NORTHERN GIRLS (Baraka Books) is one of CBC’s 50 top nonfiction titles for spring 2026. The title story, "Northern Girls," was nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize, and the Best of the Net Anthology.
Synopsis: After being tracked by wolves and left behind in the forest as a child, after sleeping through a flame-spilling chimney fire, after regularly riding in vehicles driven by adults under the influence, and after physically fighting off one of her mother’s abusive partners, author Michelle Willms is both surprised and grateful she survived her northern childhood. Following the sudden death of her mother in 2001, Willms began writing about her and her family’s history to better understand how tragedy and the breakdown of trust impacted multiple generations, and to find healing.
Brave, engaging and electric, Northern Girls is a collection of true stories about the fractured legacy of growing up in rural northern Ontario. Exploring themes of generational trauma, parental addictions, and domestic violence, Willms confronts a past replete with both fragility and resilience.
PRAISE FOR NORTHERN GIRLS
“Willms lays bare her coming-of-age with the candour of youth, an unflinching eye, and a poet’s ear for language. Fierce, harrowing, and lyrical, this collection asks what it means to survive.”
— Anna Leventhal, author of Sweet Affliction
“Like the noise of ice groaning beneath the weight of human feet, you will sigh with deep relief as your heart cracks beneath the weight of Willms’ powerful truths. Sometimes heartrending, always tender, I couldn’t put Northern Girls down.” — Léa Taranto, author of A Drop in the Ocean
“This collection is an intimate, beautiful excavation of what it means to survive the freezing temperatures of both the Canadian winter and a difficult family life and emerge, like the grass in spring, into a hard-won light.”
— Sarah Einstein, author of Mot: A Memoir
“Willms breaks the silence on intergenerational family trauma with searing vulnerability. She writes with poetic lyricism and emotional precision, balancing grit with love and connection. Her deeply moving stories skip like stones thrown across a darkly placid northern lake.”
— Cid V Brunet, author of This Is My Real Name
NORTHERN GIRLS REVIEWS AND AUTHOR INTERVIEWS
"A raw and unflinching collection of nine true stories about growing up in the north with a single mother. The book navigates generational trauma, parental addiction, and more while uncovering resilience and strength." Full author interview with All Lit Up can be found here.
“Northern Girls is a master class in poetry. It’s the absolute beauty and resonance of the writing—Willms paints imagery of the North that is alive and intense and deeply rooted.” Read Joanne McDonald's full article here on page 15 in NewsNow.
“Willms tells these stories straight, which lets the emotional impact unfold within the reader ... There is trauma in every tale, but this is not a misery memoir. It’s just life in the North ... This small-format paperback sits lightly in the hand, but like many products of the North it punches above its weight.” You can read the full review by Dawn Macdonald for the The Seaboard Review here.
“A courageous collection of true stories about growing up in rural northern Ontario amid instability, silence, and survival.” Full author interview with fellow author Sandra Orchard can be read here.
*Northern Girls is available to buy at book stores or online. Please support Independent Bookstores if you can.
Anthology
Canadian author Michelle Willms' short fiction "Old Car" is one of fifteen stories featured in THIS SIDE OF THE DIVIDE: STORIES OF THE AMERICAN WEST (Baobab Press).
Synopsis: From Baobab Press, in coordination with the University of Nevada, Reno’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, comes This Side of the Divide: Stories of the American West, the first anthology in a literary series attempting to capture the newness, vastness, territoriality and sense of transience alive in the American West. Set west of the Continental Divide, these narratives skillfully demonstrate the beauty, austerity, and danger of the untouched wilderness, delight in the mutual ease and asphyxiation of the hyper-urban and chart the interstitial spaces of the developing and the abandoned. Inhabiting the West’s richly varied landscapes, the characters in these stories provide a glimpse of the social and cultural diversity on display in these regions.
Positioning the voices of emerging authors alongside acclaimed writers such as Tobias Wolff, Brian Evenson and Nona Caspers, these collected stories, at turns hilarious, frightening, and devastating, showcase the variety of identity, amalgam of voice and depth of character that make the American West such a truly brilliant, literary mosaic.
Creative Nonfiction
"Northern Girls" Club Plum Literary Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2025. *Nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize, and Best of the Net Anthology; "Northern Girls" is the title story in Michelle Willms' memoir, Northern Girls.
"The Kill Switch" Hippocampus Magazine, May/June Issue, 2020; included in Michelle Willms' memoir, Northern Girls. *Thank you to my old friend, Mike, for allowing me to use personal parts of his life story in this essay.
Short Fiction
"Verging on Blue" Black Dandy: Fiction For the Fearless, Issue 2, 2018.
"The Safe Side of the Chain" (auto-fiction). Scrivener Creative Review and Lieu Commun's Joint Bilingual Issue (by invitation), 2017; originally published as auto-fiction, but revised to creative nonfiction and included in Michelle Willms' memoir, Northern Girls.
"Uncle Léo of the North" (auto-fiction) Scrivener Creative Review, Issue 42, 2017; originally published as auto-fiction, but revised to creative nonfiction and included in Michelle Willms' memoir, Northern Girls. *Thank you to the Abitibi/Wahgoshig First Nation people for allowing me to use their First Nation name in this story.
"Slaw" (auto-fiction) Scrivener Creative Review, Issue 41, 2016; originally published as auto-fiction, but revised to creative nonfiction and included in Michelle Willms' memoir, Northern Girls.
"Twenty, Four, and Seven" Dance to Death (Sorrowland Press), 2008.
Film
Associate Producer for the award-winning short film, QUIET (My Bubble Films), 2022.
Poetry
"i carry no scythe" In/Words, Volume 12.1, 2012
"Death to iPhone" The Writers Block, Issue 3, 2009. *Published under pen name.
"Nature's Heartbeat" Beneath the Harvest Moon Anthology (National Library of Poetry), 1996 *Recipient of the Editor's Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry. Published under maiden name.
Cartoons, Comics, and Illustrations
Please visit my Instagram account to see my work.
About
Michelle Willms holds two degrees from McMaster University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. She is the 2021/2022 recipient of the Norman L. Rothstein Memorial Scholarship, generously issued by The Smith Family Foundation and awarded on the recommendation of the Department of Creative Writing to a student who has shown ability in writing poetry. She is a 2026 nominee for the Pushcart Prize, and the Best of the Net anthology.
Michelle and her family live in Southern Ontario, Canada, as settlers on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples.
© Michelle Willms 2026
