Michelle Willms, writer
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Memoir
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Northern Girls: True Stories (Creative Nonfiction Short Story Collection)
Baraka Books, April 1, 2026. Preorder available here: ​
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Creative Nonfiction​​
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Club Plum Literary Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2025
*Nominated for the 2026 Best of the Net Anthology.
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Hippocampus Magazine, May/June Issue, 2020
*Thank you to my old friend, Mike, for allowing me to use personal parts of his life story in this essay.
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Short Fiction
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"Old Car"
This Side of the Divide: Stories of the American West Anthology (Baobab Press), 2019
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Black Dandy: Fiction For the Fearless, Issue 2, 2018​
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"The Safe Side of the Chain" (auto-fiction)
Scrivener Creative Review and Lieu Commun's Joint Bilingual Issue (by invitation), 2017
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"Uncle Léo of the North" (auto-fiction)
Scrivener Creative Review, Issue 42, 2017
*Thank you to the Abitibi/Wahgoshig First Nation people for allowing me to use their First Nation name in this story.
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"Slaw" (auto-fiction)
Scrivener Creative Review, Issue 41, 2016
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"Twenty, Four, and Seven"
Dance to Death (Sorrowland Press), 2008
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Poetry
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In/Words, Volume 12.1, 2012
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"Death to iPhone"
The Writers Block, Issue 3, 2009
*Published under pen name.
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"Nature's Heartbeat"
Beneath the Harvest Moon (National Library of Poetry), 1996
*Recipient of the Editor's Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry.
*Published under maiden name, Michelle Kretz.
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Cartoons, Comics, and Illustrations
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Please visit my Instagram account to see my work.
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About
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Michelle 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.
