Welcome to the website of Michael Strelow.
My 2005 novel, The Greening of Ben Brown, was a finalist for the Ken Kesey Novel Award of the Oregon Literary Arts. This book is about water, ecology, love, a small town, and the strength of community. Not incidentally, it's about a man who is turned green in an electrical accident, moves to a small town and affects everyone. (This greening really happened to man in western Pennsylvania in the 1950s). Even the strangest characters in town are made more normal for having a green neighbor. His name is Brown, and the guy at the gas station becomes a local hero for being able to greet Mr. Brown without a hitch while looking at green skin and saying, "Good morning Mr. Brown." The Town of East Leven, Oregon, on the Willamette River, its factory with chemical settling ponds, its citizens, is as much the hero of this story as is the green man. This is my love letter to small towns everywhere.
I am a professor of English and American Studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. I have published poetry, short stories, and non-fiction in a number of literary magazines including: The Bellingham Review, Sou'wester,Willow Spring, Kansas Quarterly, Mid-West Poetry Review, Poetry Midwest, Oregon Quarterly, Northwest Review, Orchids, Hubbub, Cutbank, and others. My other books : Kesey (non-fiction about Ken Kesey), and An Anthology of Northwest Writing: 1900-1950. See also article, "All that Hoo-Ha" in Spit in the Ocean # 7: All about Ken Kesey, Penguin Books, 2003, edited by Ed McClanahan. Upcoming work: a novel, The Moby-Dick Blues, about lost love, the original manuscript for Moby-Dick (long lost), and redemption, and The Devil's in the House (working title) about the economics of beer, brewing, transportation, and prostitution in Portland, Oregon in the late 19th century--loosely based on the life and times of Henry Weinhard.
Contact me at: mstrelow@willamette.edu
My Wildflowers article link: http://www.oregonquarterly.com/spring2009/feature3.php
To purchase The Greening of Ben Brown--book or electronic form--go to:
hawthornebooks.com
amazon.com
.
The Greening of Ben Brown isn't a lecture [on ecology]. It is unfailingly lyric, amusing and exciting. It is about communities, physical and emotional. It is a tale of wonders and everyday things.
Dan Hays Statesman Journal
An intriguing debut novel.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Brings to mind Ken Kesey, Tom Robbins, Northwest magic realism, a blend of fable, social realism, wry wisdom, irreverence
The Oregonian
Now what a gift your Green Man is! My wife caught me laughing aloud on consecutive nights at these brilliant wacko characters. I just loved the river as a character and the water and the light and the overall soggy Oregonness of it. The better the book. the slower I read, so just finished Green Man tonight. Wondering where the hell I was when this book came out, and how come nobody told me about it? I admire the plotting, the story. I guess I like best of all your sentences. I liked best how the sentences moved with such energy and humor from one to the next. I liked best also how smart all these people were, and the dynamics of a small town. Nice work.
Letter from Robin Cody, author of Ricochet River (a novel), Voyage of a Summer Sun (canoe trip adventure the length of the Columbia River) and Another Way the River Has: Taut True Tales from the Northwest (essay collection)
