The Book Beat will be hosting a special evening signing for authors Scott Martelle and Colleen J. McElroy on Thursday, October 18th at 7:00 pm at the Book Beat, located at 26010 Greenfield, in Oak Park. Los Angeles Times reporter Scott Martelle, will present his book Blood Passion, a history about this nation's deadliest labor struggle. Colleen McElroy is a distinguished African-American poet, Editor-in-Chief of the Seattle Review and a professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington, Seattle. For more information, please call 248-968-1190.

Scott Martelle is a Los Angeles area author of the recently published Blood Passion, a book that chronicles coal miner labor relations in 1914, that escalated in an all-out war between the Colorado National Guard and armed strikers. The violence and arson finally ended when President Woodrow Wilson sent in the United States Army. Overall at least seventy-five men, women, and children were killed in seven months, likely the nation's deadliest labor struggle.

In Blood Passion, journalist Scott Martelle explores this little-noted tale of political corruption and repression and immigrants' struggles against dominant social codes of race, ethnicity, and class. More than a simple labor dispute, the events surrounding Ludlow embraced some of the most volatile social movements of the early twentieth century, pitting labor activists, socialists, and anarchists against the era's powerful business class, including John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and helped give rise to the modern twins of corporate public relations and political "spin." But at its heart, Blood Passion is the dramatic story of small lives merging into a movement for change and of the human struggle for freedom and dignity.

"Blood Passion is the definitive account of a major landmark in the American struggle for social justice. And the way Scott Martelle tells the story is splendid proof that history can both be written as vividly as a novel and also be documented with scrupulous care."
- Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves

"We must welcome this carefully-researched study of one of the most dramatic, violent, and important episodes in the history of labor struggles in this country."
- Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

"From this country's earliest days, we have wrestled with the conflicting concepts of respecting our government and rebelling against it. Blood Passion is an attempt to knock some of the dust off this long-forgotten yet hugely emblematic moment in American history."
-- Scott Martelle

Scott Martelle is a writer for the Los Angeles Times. A native of Maine who grew up in rural western New York, he lives with his wife and their two sons in Irvine, California. Visit the author's website at http://www.scottmartelle.com/

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Colleen J. McElroy is a professor emeritus of English and creative writing at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the author of several poetry collections, including Traveling Music.

Read an interview with the author at: African- American Lit Suite 101

Colleen J. McElroy's poetry shoots for the moon, and takes it in, too, in one way after another. The collection’s award-winning poems animate women’s experiences of sex, shopping, and dancing, while offering telling insight into the struggles and silver lining of lust, love, illness, and aging. Rich with vivid imagery and candid storytelling, Sleeping with the Moon takes readers on moonlit adventures under the night sky, through the barroom’s smoky haze, and under the covers.

"...Beware: such delicate
sights have driven more than one woman to despair
instead she watched him breathe-- relishing
for a moment that secret space where night
grows soft and the moon’s detumescence forgives--
and where if this jeweled light holds they might
strip themselves of years if only for one night."

Colleen J. McElroy lives in Seattle Washington, and is on the Creative Writing faculty of the Department of English at the University of Washington where she has taught for the past thirty-five years. Author of 14 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, McElroy also is a folklorist, and as a Fulbright Scholar and a Dupont Distinguished Scholar has researched the oral tradition in a number of countries, including Madagascar, Vietnam, Sardinia, Cuba, Morocco, the former Yugoslavia, and the Cook Islands. Her text, OVER THE LIP OF THE WORLD: AMONG THE STORYTELLERS OF MADAGASCAR was a 2001 finalist in the PEN-USA-West awards. She has also received an American Book Award for her collection of poems, QUEEN OF THE EBONY ISLES. In addition to receiving two Fulbright Fellowships, she has also received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, a Rockefeller Fellowship. She is currently editor-in-chief of the literary magazine, Seattle Review.