Michele Zimmerman
Author & Editor
Portraits © 2023 by Michael Kushner
About Michele
Michele Zimmerman (she/her) is a queer writer with a BA and an MFA in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work appears in Catapult’s TINY NIGHTMARES: VERY SHORT TALES OF HORROR, BULLSHIT LIT, POST ROAD, and others. By day, she edits and writes for a magazine about illumination and design.
How to Turn Your Sister-in-Law Into a Frog According To the Manager of JoAnn Fabric and Crafts, Who Runs a Coven on the Side
Published 2025
Listen closely to hear one of her names spoken in a whisper while you stand in the seasonal décor aisle. She is all the same: The Crafty Crone, The Hag of Hot Glue, The Enchantress of Embroidery. Her birthname is Sherry and she appears to only be the General Manager of the Joann Fabric and Crafts store in the strip mall, sandwiched between the Weight Watcher’s meeting center and the Carvel ice cream parlor, on the far side of town. Those of us who are in the know have only come to know through word of mouth, and only after one of the other coven sisters have decided we can be trusted with the secrets hidden beneath the shelves of scrapbooking supplies, the mysteries tucked inside magazines on quilting techniques, the words threaded through silk flower garlands.
“Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of.”
- Shirley Jackson