“Where TIARAS are mandatory and reading our good books is the ONLY rule!”

“Where TIARAS are mandatory and reading our good books is the ONLY rule!”

Welcome to the Wonderful World of The Pulpwood Queens Book Club Reading Nation!

You are now in the know on all that is happening at with our authors, our books, our book club, and events!

January 18, 2000 marked the occasion of the Grand Opening of Beauty and the Book, the ONLY Hair Salon/Book Store in the World! We have been having a GRAND time ever since.

Oxford American Magazine, The Magazine of Good Southern Writing, surprised me by covering my Grand Opening with an awesome feature that began the media mecca to my shop including features on Oprah Winfrey’s OXYGEN NETWORK, to The Oprah Winfrey Show to kicking off Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gipson’s READ THIS Book Club on Good Morning America and featured in The Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal with many more!

Just months after opening my Beauty and the Book, I started my book club with six complete strangers that has now grown into the largest “meeting and discussing” book club in the world, 780+ chapters of The Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs and yes, a few Timber Guys, the men who have bravely joined in our crusade and mission to promote authors, books, literacy, and reading all while having some BIG TIME FUN!

After nearly 20 years in business, Beauty and the Book quietly closed its doors as The Pulpwood Queen went back to school! That’s right, Kathy L. Murphy returned to college at The University of Texas in Tyler, graduating with my B.F.A in Fine Art, minor in Art History! In the meantime, the Pulpwood Queen Book Club has been growing in leaps and bounds, so The Pulpwood Queens focus will be on keeping the book club going. We now have chapters nationwide and in fifteen foreign countries so we are now an international book club.

Our motto is “where TIARAS are mandatory and reading our good books is the ONLY rule!” Our sole mission is to promote the arts, our authors, their books, literacy, and reading.

We really like to roll out the red carpet, or should I say leopard print carpet, for all the authors that grace us with their presence during our book club teleconferences, Facetime, Skype, and when they come to be showcased at our annual book club convention that we call Girlfriend Weekend. All authors that books that I read and select our made either Official Pulpwood Queen Book Club Selections or Bonus Book Club Selections. These authors and these authors only are invited to attend and be featured at our annual convention always held Martin Luther King Weekend. This year marks our 20th Anniversary and will be the biggest event I have ever done. The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club embrace the total experience of the read! We love to treat all our authors royally and bow to the feet of our author Kings and Queens!

We have had some amazing book signings all hosted by my Pulpwood Queen Book Club chapters that have included the likes of Kinky Friedman, (who was running for Governor of Texas at the time), Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and of Golden Girl Fame, Rue McClanahan.

Pulitzer Prize winners, Edward Humes and the late great Doug Marlette, Pat Conroy, Fannie Flagg, John Berendt, Alice Hoffman, Lisa Wingate, and even Supermodel Paulina Porizkova have been featured at our Girlfriend Weekend.

These authors provide a great draw but our real mission is to also include the first time, first book author, and the undiscovered author who we like to help to get discovered in a big way.

We showcase all of them each year, close to 50 authors who always grace our annual book club hosted festival which we call GIRLFRIEND WEEKEND, always held Martin Luther King Weekend in January of each year that usual Grand Finale is our “Great Big Ball of Hair” Ball!

We even now have our own documentary by filmmaker, William Torgerson that won the Audience Choice Award for Full Feature Film at The International Phenom Film Festival in Shreveport/Bossier, LA Film Festival!