A Closer Look at The Pulpwood Queens Book Club
The tiara-wearing, book-bearing and author-sharing women who comprise the members of the Pulpwood Queens Book Club have a lot of fun together but their mission is most serious: promoting reading, literacy and helping several worthwhile authors get some much-deserved attention. It’s an accomplishment that makes club founder Kathy Patrick proud.“We are the largest meeting and discussing book club in America, and I believe we may be the only franchised book club that meets and discusses the same book in person,” she says.
Although Patrick always wanted to be in a book club she found most clubs were too elitist and pretentious. She wanted a club that would be fun and also promoted reading, and in March 2000, Patrick opened the first hair salon/bookstore in the country, Beauty and the Book, drawing on her varied experiences ranging from book publisher’s representative to cosmetologist.
The first step was to get members. “For about a month I talked this book club up as the next best thing since sliced bread,” she recalls, contacting friends and clients. Six women showed up for that meeting, most of them women Patrick did not know very well. But she plied them with wine, fruit and cheese and told them they were going to be called The Pulpwood Queens of East Texas Book Club.
“I wanted our club to not only appeal to those of us in historic Jefferson, Texas, but be a book club that reached out to those who lived at the surrounding lakes, even outside the county,” says Patrick. “Our motto was going to be ‘where tiaras are mandatory and reading good books is the RULE!’ They all looked at me like deer caught in someone’s headlights so I plied them with more wine and just blabbered away.”
After the women left, Patrick was convinced she’d never see them again, but 35 women showed up the next month all wearing tiaras and carrying casserole dishes. Since then, Patrick has never looked back. Currently the Pulpwood Queens’ charter chapter fluctuates from 50 to 100 members year to year. While the majority of Pulpwood Queens Book Club chapters are in Texas there are also chapters in Virginia, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida, for a total membership of approximately 1,000 nationwide. A new club starts every week, but some chapters fold as each group is only as good as its Head Queen, Patrick observes.
When it comes to selecting books, Patrick says she likes to choose books from authors who are undiscovered, authors who haven’t made the television book club lists or the New York Times bestseller list, and first books written by writers who were previously known for another career.
“I have found that critics and book reviewers tend to discriminate against television writers turned book authors, like one of our Pulpwood Queens Book Club Selections Liberating Paris, by Linda Bloodworth Thomason of “Designing Women” fame. A great read is a great read regardless of where the writer has been,” she says.
Authors Michael Lee West, Sarah Bird, Carol Dawson and Sharon Boorstin are Pulpwood Queens’ favorites because even though they have written more than one book they still haven’t broken into “the big leagues.”
“My criteria are the books must be well-written and have merit, there must be something discussable, the book must give a new voice to literature, and I really want to help get an author discovered,” explains Patrick. “A few buyers in New York are unfortunately shaping what America reads,” she adds.
Since Patrick believes “a good book is a good book,” she will review print-on-demand books if they fit the Pulpwood Queens’ criteria.
Typically Patrick receives five to 10 books a week, but she’s overwhelmed with submissions when the Pulpwood Queens are featured in the media. “I answered my phone one call right after another for two days straight after we kicked off “Good Morning America’s” READ THIS Book Club, and then the phone rang off the hook for two weeks after a feature in the Los Angeles Times. It was fun, but as always, fleeting,” Patrick says of the notoriety, which hasn’t changed the focus of the group.
“It’s just the frosting on the cake,” Patrick says of the media attention. “I’m asked all the time if I have let the media go to my head. I reply by telling them I still put my skirt on one leg at a time and still clean my own toilets. Our focus has and will always be to promote literacy.”
While Pulpwood Queens are not required to attend meetings, it is mandatory to read the book selections. This policy has helped author’s bookstore sales, says Patrick. In addition, many publishers place the Pulpwood Queens’ Official Stamp of Approval on their books, which helps generate additional sales, even if the purchaser doesn’t belong to the book club. “They feel the book is a good choice if the club selected it,” she says.
And the Pulpwood Queens have seen some exciting results for books they’ve reviewed. “Many books after we have selected them as a book of the month club selection sell their paperback rights, movie rights or their book gets picked up by Oprah to be featured or one of the other television book clubs. Our last author, after we selected him, was chosen as the Southeast Bookseller Association’s ‘Southern Book of the Year’ and is in negotiations with Hallmark Hall of Fame,” notes Patrick, referring to poet-turned-author Ron Rash’s Saints of the River.
Since Beauty and the Book is a combination hair salon/bookstore, Patrick still finds time to do hair, Tuesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. unless she’s running the book club or attending a speaking engagement. “We are not our mothers’ book club and we are not our mothers’ hair salon. Beauty and the Book is a state-of-the-art Redken Salon and all my salon professionals are just that – professionals,” she said. Patrick and her staff keep themselves educated and attend all area hair cutting, coloring and product classes. “Anything you have done in the big city you can have done at Beauty and the Book. We want everyone who graces our doors to know that they are very important to us and we appreciate their business,” she says, adding that they are often open on holidays and weekend evenings, too.
Any Pulpwood Queens Selection Author who graces the doors of Beauty and the Book receives services free of charge. “I figure if they come to ‘Mayberry on the Bayou,’ I better treat them like royalty,” says Patrick. Oxford American Magazine dubbed Patrick “Hairdresser of the Authors,” and she’s run with the title. “Jose Eber has nothing on the Pulpwood Queens,” says Patrick, referring to the infamous hairdresser to the stars. “Besides, I’d rather do an author’s hair any day as opposed to a star’s!”
Patrick would like to see the Pulpwood Queens continue to grow and pass from one generation to the next. “I would love it if my daughters (Helaina, 13 and Madeleine, 9, both avid readers) ran Pulpwood Queens book clubs, and then their daughters long after I am gone. Reading is the one fundamental key toward education and making this world a better place. There aren’t any negatives with reading, all positive actions,” she says.
Kathy Patrick can be contacted at kathy@beautyandthebook.com or at Beauty and the Book, 210 West Austin, Jefferson, TX 75657 (903) 665-7520.
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