Carolyn Turgeon, author of five novels, including Mermaid and the upcoming The Fairest of Them All, writes:
Six years ago I wrote an article for Shelf Awareness after attending my first Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Weekend in East Texas, just after my first novel was published. It was my first book festival, I spoke on my first panel, and it was the first time I met a barrage of open-hearted authors and readers at once, many of them bedecked with tiaras and rhinestones and leopard print. And it was the first time I met Kathy Patrick, founder of the Pulpwood Queens, the largest meet-and-greet book club in the world with more than 550 chapters in the U.S., a woman whose love of books and stories is infectious and larger than life. Kathy also owns the country's only bookstore/hair salon, in Jefferson, Tex. When you walk inside, it's like entering a jewelry box that's been flung open. I love it all: I believe that books should be associated with as much glamour and razzle-dazzle as possible.
The weekend before last, I attended my fourth Girlfriend Weekend, and next summer my fifth novel will be published. In these past few years, Kathy has become my dear friend and the Pulpwood Queens a significant part of my life. I've come to know the Pulpwood Queens not only as a fun-loving book club with a deep love of glamour (and gemstones! and Marilyn!), but also as an umbrella for all kinds of impassioned offshoot literacy projects that use books to make people's lives richer. Kathy herself uses proceeds from the annual authors' auction at Girlfriend Weekend to fund the Dolly Parton Imagination Library in her home Marion County (Jefferson is the county seat), where 39% of adults are illiterate. Now, through the program, more than 100 children get books every month so that they'll be reading-ready by the time they hit school.
Outside of Jefferson, there's been so much activity that a few years ago Kathy created the KAT award to give out to one book club member or chapter every year for going beyond the call in promoting literacy. As she explains, "We aren't just your mama's book club; we're a book club that is making a real difference through the great connector, BOOKS!!"
This year's KAT winner is Alyse Urice, an "old hippie rebel" Pulpwood Queen from Golden, Colo., whose tiny nonprofit, Literacy and Hope, recycles books into the hands of those who need them. When Alyse learned that her local library, Jefferson County Library, was getting ready to toss sets of reference books and encyclopedias, she called around to find some kind of program in her area that might be able to use them. When her partner suggested Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Alyse's first thought, she says, was that "the last thing they needed was another white woman trying to help." But she called them anyway and discovered that the five schools on the reservation had virtually no books for their students and that a kid is more likely to commit suicide than graduate high school there.
She loaded a truck with thousands of books--those reference books donated by Jefferson County Library and a few new books donated by a handful of authors and publishers--and drove to Pine Ridge. "I was overwhelmed," she says, "by the willingness of parents, students, and teachers to come together on a summer day to receive books for the next school year. It was good to know that it was something genuinely needed and appreciated." Now she's helping to set up several libraries in the reservation's five schools.
Over a Mexican dinner last week in Jefferson, Alyse was saying that she's getting ready to make another run up to Pine Ridge, but is having trouble coming up with gas money (about $500, she estimates). Right then and there, Kathy reached into her purse and handed Alyse a large bill (inspiring the rest of us to follow suit), and vowed to raise the rest of the money Alyse needs on Facebook. Kathy's already proven that she can work miracles: when she told her followers last spring that if they'd buy 1,000 copies of Michael Morris's novel Man in the Blue Moon during the next month, she'd dye her hair blue, her locks were sky-colored within two weeks. (If you want to help Alyse in her mission, you can visit her website Literacy and Hope and donate through PayPal or e-mail her to arrange to send books to Pine Ridge.)
More than 3,000 miles north of Golden, in Anchorage, Alaska, another inspiring Pulpwood Queen, Mary Grove, founded a chapter of the book club at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center for Women. After much red tape, the first meeting was held in March 2009 and a month later they discussed their first book, The Big Beautiful by Pamela Duncan. Now Mary and her fellow Pulpwood Queens go to Hiland once a month with cupcakes and juice to talk books with a group of 14 women inmates, some of whom have been incarcerated for years. There's a waiting list to join, as old members are released and new members from the prison population join. In addition to reading, Mary says, they've compiled and produced a cookbook and a selection of greeting cards to raise money to support their club and give back to the community. Through the book club, "the women are better read, more confident, and have learned that their opinions matter," Mary says.
When I got a job at the University of Alaska at Anchorage's Low-Residency MFA Program in 2010, Kathy told me that I had to meet Mary Grove myself. I contacted Mary, hoping to maybe meet with her and the (un-incarcerated) Pulpwood Queens for dinner. In typical Pulpwood Queen fashion, Mary outdid herself: she offered to pick me up at the airport, let me stay at her house, and throw a big dinner where I could meet everyone. And so I met and fell in love with another group of book-loving tiara-wearing ladies. When, that summer, I gave a public reading as part of UAA's residency program, Mary and the other Pulpwood Queens showed up in tiaras, hooting and hollering and making all the other faculty members think that I have my own private fan club.
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| Hail to the Queens: Sarah Jane, Carolyn Turgeon, Mary Grove |
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Mary asked, too, if I'd visit the prison and do a special reading for the inmates. I visited Hiland that year, and now have been to the prison several times. It's astonishing, sitting with a room full of women as thirsty for stories, for the escape and magic that they bring, as those ladies are. Now I stay with Mary and visit with her and her queens--the ones in prison and the ones in the world at large--every summer. This summer, I hope to lure some of my fellow faculty members to Hiland along with me, to read from their works and speak to those ladies, who will appreciate it in a way that's hard to understand if you haven't been there. One of the book club members, Sarah Jane, was released nearly a year ago after more than a decade in prison and is now the first official Paroled Pulpwood Queen of Anchorage, Alaska. I, too, am proud to be an official member of the Anchorage Pulpwood Queens and can't believe that it all stemmed from one rhinestone- and book-loving lady in East Texas.
But it did. And as we speak, Pulpwood Queen Kay Huck and her Southwest Louisiana chapter are funding an entire school in Nicaragua with books and planning their annual trip there, and Mary Grove is planning the next trip to Hiland and giving the paroled (and gorgeous, and brilliant) Sarah Jane advice as she navigates the world outside of prison, and Alyse is gathering those dollars to get herself and thousands of more books to South Dakota, and Kathy is continuing to be a force of nature from her hub in East Texas. And, I'm sure, all kinds of other little sparks are igniting as these women inspire other women and people continue to save each other and get saved by books and stories.