Kathy Patrick‘s message at her annual Girlfriend Weekend gathering of the Pulpwood Queen’s Book Club is clear: she wants more. More books, more attention for deserving authors and more air time. Specifically, she’s urging book fans to contact Good Morning America (the show that put book club on the map back in 2000) and ask them to help spread the word. Oh, and there’s always Oprah.
Can she pull it off from tiny Jefferson in East Texas where her combo salon/bookstore Beauty and the Book combines kitsch with lit? Don’t put it past her. She had a dry run at Girlfriend Weekend with her and Robert Leleux (Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy) serving as the co-hosts, collectively known as BobKat, who sprinkled invited authors (including yours truly flogging his novel-in-stories Evacuation Plan) with insightful questions. Leleux, Joe Nick Patoski (Willie Nelson: An Epic Life) and I proved that even a few guys can hang with the girlfriends.
In fact, Leleux proved the true hit of the weekend regaling the crowd with stories of his mother’s penchant for wigs and plastic surgery. Mom looked on as proud as could be.
This article appears in January 16 • 2009.