Michael Delp – författare

A dark, rollicking collection of stories about men prone to foolishness trying to make their way in a modern world.

In As If We Were Prey Michael Delp presents working-class male characters who are tried, tested, and pushed to their limits. Struggling with the demons of childhood and the indignities of adult life, they work dead-end jobs, keep the peace within their families, and attempt to assert themselves against authority whenever they can. While Delp’s characters are fathers and sons, students and teachers, they all share a sense of alienation and melancholy that propels them to antics and ill-conceived plans. Although they hope that their rash actions will prove their independence, they generally only reveal their essential vulnerability.

Set mostly in small-town northern Michigan, Delp follows boys and full-grown men who know how to fight, fish, and hunt, but struggle to use those skills to overcome the emptiness and dysfunction of their day-to-day lives. A boy takes revenge on the neighborhood bully and watches his downfall with unexpected emotion, a man visits a tourist attraction with a caged bear and empathizes with the creature, a teacher quits his job and hits the road as a one-man trivia quiz show, a father shares his childhood stories of defeat with his young daughter and inspires her to settle a score, two men catch a giant bass and keep it in the bathtub all winter to fatten it to prize-winning size, and a Vietnam vet and shop teacher switches into combat mode to teach his students a chilling lesson.

The stories in As If We Were Prey are both humorous and haunting, fast-paced and tender. Fans of Delp’s writing as well as all readers of fiction will enjoy these stories of men pushing the limits of their lives.

New short fiction by some of Michigan’s well-known and highly acclaimed authors.

Bob Seger''s House and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by some of Michigan''s most well-known fiction writers. This collection of twenty-two short stories serves as a celebration not only of the tenth anniversary of the Made in Michigan Writers Series in 2016 but also of the rich history of writing and storytelling in the region. As series editors Michael Delp and M. L. Leibler state in their preface, "The stories contained in this anthology are a way to stay connected to each other. Think of them as messages sent from all over the map, stitching readers and writers together through stories that continue to honor the ancient art of the fire tale, the hunting epic, and all of the ways language feeds the blood of imagination."

The scope of this project reflects the dynamic and diverse writing that is currently taking place by people who consider their home to be the Great Lakes state. Stories are far-ranging, from the streets of Detroit and the iconic presence of the auto industry to the wild tracts of the Upper Peninsula. The book vibrates with that tension, of metal versus rock and human frailty taking on the pitfalls and hardships of living in this world.

In his foreword, Charles Baxter asks, "Does a region give rise to a particular kind of literature? Michigan is so fiercely diverse in its landscapes, its economy, and its demographics that it presents anybody who wants to write about it with a kind of blank slate. You can''t summarize the state easily." These storytellers exude a "Michigan aesthetic" in their writing, something that cannot be learned in a textbook or taught in a classroom but can be felt through the tales of these storytellers.

The experience of picking up this collection is akin to taking a drive from the mechanized world and arriving several hours later in one of the wildest places on earth. Readers of short fiction will enjoy the multitude of voices in this anthology.

A rollicking meeting of two wildly different yet incredibly similar personas . . . the Deadman in the shape and form of a trickster and the voice of an apprentice river shaman, the Mad Angler.

Lying in the River''s Dark Bed: The Confluence of the Deadman and the Mad Angler by Michael Delp is a collection of fifty-six poems that brings together two characters Delp has been perfecting for years: Deadman and the Mad Angler. The Deadman, a spirit that constantly shifts, is one part troublemaker, one part truth-teller, and one part demon who demands respect. The Mad Angler, on the other hand, could be called the Mad Shaman or Mad Activist, as he speaks of the water and nature and then of the greed of man. While these two personas are distinct in the collection (highlighted beautifully in the unique double-sided book design) they also come together at times in perfect harmony.

The Deadman and the Mad Angler are walking contradictions—twin sons of different mothers. The Deadman is a trickster figure, a hive of contradictions. He can be killed but cannot die. He is supremely intelligent, yet is as dumb as a stone. He is an enigma to himself and to all others, yet he understands the origins and the meanings of the inner lives of all things. He is impossible to understand, yet somehow through his musings enlightenment occurs. His poems inspire contentedness, even though they might frighten you first in order to do so. The Mad Angler is more finely tuned, focused primarily on the environment. He exercises more restraint and resistance than his scattered brother, focusing on nature and on what is flowing in the water around him and inside of him. His voice is sure and firm on all things water related because he is as much river as person. The collection embraces these voices as separate and unique identities, while highlighting a center section called "Confluence," the place where these two come together to meditate on some of the most profound emotions evoked by the contemporary world.

Lying in the River''s Dark Bed reflects the compatibilities and contradictions of the natural world. These ritualized poems are both funny and thought provoking and an example of persona writing at its best. Those interested in conversational poetry and environmental writing will be enthralled with this stirring yet soothing collection.