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November 20, 2009

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The organizer of the nation’s fastest-growing book club will come home to Emporia for a book-signing session that will begin at 6 p.m. Friday at Town Crier bookstore, 716 Commercial St.

Kathy L. Patrick, who was born and raised in Eureka, will sign copies of her first book, “The Pulpwood Queen’s Tiara-Wearing, Book-Sharing Guide to Life,” which was released in January.

Patrick attended Emporia State University in the 1980s and worked as a hairdresser here to support herself when she was a student. She majored in art and geology.

Her parents — Laurence “Buddy” and Mary Maloney Murphy — also attended ESU when it was named Kansas State Teachers College. Murphy majored in physical education, and his wife majored in speech and drama. Buddy Murphy owned a drilling company in Greenwood County and had a partnership relationship with Glacier Petroleum in Emporia, Patrick said.

“I have really fond memories of my time in Emporia, and the only reason why I left was I got married and my husband wanted to go to California.”

She was employed as a book publisher’s representative at a time when independent bookstores were being squeezed out by national chains. When the company downsized, Patrick, as the last representative hired, was the first one to be let go. It was a date she can’t forget — Oct. 4, 1999.

She called her sister and asked for advice.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you go back to doing hair?’” Patrick said. “I went to beauty school so I could have a job to work my way through college.”

Patrick combined her sister’s idea for a beauty shop with her own passion for reading. The result was the Beauty and the Book, a combination beauty salon and bookstore she opened a few months later, on Jan. 18, 2000, in Jefferson, Texas.

“It’s in an old Gulf Service Station, and it’s very unique,” she said. “I’ve had people say this reminds me of a gypsy caravan wagon or Moulin Rouge.”

It is, she said, the only hair salon-bookstore in the country.

The unique store quickly became successful, and Patrick founded the Pulpwood Queens book club, which has more than 230 chapters in the United States and several international chapters. More than 100 authors whose books have been chosen for club readership have participated in club events, she said.

Patrick’s book club differs from other clubs because she chooses the books, provides discussion questions and has authors call in to the chapter to talk with members. Her husband, Jay, has organized a distaff side to the Pulpwood Queens, called the “Timber Guys Book Club” that includes husbands of the Pulpwood group.

The men chose to read Tom Brokaw’s “Boom! Talking About the Sixties,” and Patrick managed to get Brokaw to call the Timber Guys for a discussion during their meeting.

“But you know, Mr. Brokaw knows that if I pick his book, literally thousands are going to be buying the book,” she said. “He said, ‘I’d love to call.’”

Although reading is a passion Patrick would like to instill in everyone, she wants the book club to be more than simply reading.

“The interesting thing about my book club is that it is not only the largest, we want to be the book club that has the higher purpose and has a mission towards good works,” she said.

She will fly to Anchorage, Alaska, soon to visit a Pulpwood Queens chapter that will celebrate its first anniversary. The chapter’s project had been reading to children. Soon, they will open the first chapter ever in a women’s correctional facility in Alaska, Patrick said.

Patrick’s higher purpose has been working at a local mission, teaching a “life writing class” for homeless men.

“We’re going to take their stories and put it together,” she said of the book that is in the planning stages.

“Every single one of the ones I’m working on, maybe except for one, are college-educated,” Patrick said. “There’s two reasons why they’re there (at the homeless mission).

“One of them is that they had horrific childhoods; something horrible happened to them. And because of that, the second thing is they’ve made bad choices.”

She said that getting the men at the mission into reading and writing are positives that give them hope.

“When people lose hope, they have to have something to fill that hole. It’s God first,” Patrick said. “But if you can find something to put your energies into instead of drugs and alcohol …”

Reading is the natural replacement in Patrick’s eyes. She spent much of her life enjoying books and wants to pass that on to the public.

“It doesn’t have to be literary and homework and pretentious, it can be entertaining,” she said.

She’s hoping to plant a seed for a Pulpwood Queens chapter in Emporia this week. She also wants to visit the university and see whether a piece of her artwork remains on display, as it was the last time she stopped in Emporia.

And, sometime in her future, she will return to studies at a university.

Patrick has 144 hours of college credit and is considering switching her major to journalism, when she takes up higher education again. That will be after her two daughters finish college. She’s in no rush.

“I’ve been to seven universities and still have not graduated,” Patrick said. “I consider myself to be kind of a lifelong learner.”

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