Author, Elizabeth Berg to be Keynote Speaker at Pulpwood Queen Girlfriend Weekend 20010!

Dear Readers,

I am pleased and thrilled to announce that Random House is sending in New York Times Bestselling Author, Elizabeth Berg, to be Keynote Speaker at our annual Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys convention which we call Girlfriend Weekend 2010! This is our 10th Anniversary Literary Celebration. Our theme for our 10th Anniversary is "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to tie in with the 70th Anniversary of The Wizard of Oz as I was a born and raised Kansas girl whose Tornado of book reading landed her in Oz, the great STATE OF TEXAS!

As we know, "There is no place like home, there's no place like home", Elizabeth Berg will be speaking about her latest book "home safe", so a perfect tie in for the week of author, book, and literary activities.

Really, really excited about the 10th Anniversary Celebration of Beauty and the Book, The Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Club, and Girlfriend Weekend that this year has been expanded to one week, January 11- 17, 2010.

We are offering this year, not one, but two, Writer's Workshops, Three Nights of Entertainment, An Author Dinner Prepared by Two Pulpwood Queen Authors with Authors to be our wait staff, expanding to Sunday Worship Service followed that afternoon by a tour of Scarlet O-Hardy's Gone With the Wind Museum and Tour Home! If that is not enough, we are offering too an Early Bird Special for the Friday and Saturday weekend's activities, a V.I.P. Package for Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy members of $150. For non-members, it is $100 higher.

This offer lasts until September 1, 2009 or until we run out of space and tickets for events. Call 903-665-7520 to book your V.I.P. Packages today and this will be a sell out this year. As Elizabeth Berg is only the beginning of the stellar authors, speakers, and celebrities we are bringing in for the weekend, I can guarantee you will have the memory of a lifetime from attending this event!

Below is more from Elizabeth Berg's website, www.elizabeth-berg.net, so check it out and mark this event on your calendar!

Tiara wearing and Book Sharing,
Kathy L. Patrick
Founder of the Pulpwood Queens and Timber Guys Book Clubs
Beauty and the Book
608 North Polk Street
Jefferson, Texas 75657
903-665-7520
kathy@beautyandthebook.com
www.beautyandthebook.com
www.pulpwoodqueen.com
www.southernauthors.blogspot.com
www.readinggroupguides.com

Books

"Maybe Freud didn't know the answer to what women want, but Elizabeth Berg certainly does."
--The Seattle Times

"Heartwrenching...hilarious....Berg sits somewhere between Anne Tyler and Alice Hoffman."
--Chicago Sun-Times

"Berg's writing is to literature what Chopin's etudes are to music--measured, delicate, and impossible to walk away from until their completion."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Elizabeth Berg's gift as a storyteller lies most profoundly in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday."
The Boston Globe

About Elizabeth

I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on December 2, 1948, in a hospital that has been torn down, which I’m pretty steamed about. When I was three years old, my father reenlisted in the Army, and I spent my growing up years moving around a lot—twice, I went to three schools in a single academic year. You can understand my dilemma when people ask me where I’m from. My usual answer is “Um…..nowhere?”

I’ve loved books and reading from the time my mother began reading to me, and I’ve loved writing ever since I could hold a pencil. I submitted my first poem to American Girl magazine when I was nine years old. It was rejected, and it took twenty-five years before I submitted anything again. Then, I entered a contest in a magazine and won. I wrote for magazines for ten years, then moved into novels and haven’t stopped yet. I usually do a book a year. But I have to tell you, the prospect of retiring is beginning to sound better and better. I really want to live on a hobby farm with lots of animals, including a chicken, I’m dying for a chicken.

Before I became a writer, I was a registered nurse for ten years, and that was my “school” for writing—taking care of patients taught me a lot about human nature, about hope and fear and love and loss and regret and triumph and especially about relationships--all things that I tend to focus on in my work. I worked as a waitress, which is also good training for a writer, and I sang in a rock band which was not good for anything except the money I made. I was a dramatic and dreamy child, given to living more inside my head than outside, something that persists up to today and makes me a terrible dining partner. I was married for over twenty years and am now divorced. I have two daughters and two grandchildren. I live with my partner Bill and my dog Homer outside of Chicago and in Wisconsin.

Girlfriends

How would we survive without girlfriends? I want to let mine contribute to my website in whatever way they see fit. Be prepared for anything on this page! And incidentally, if you write to me, you may find that I'm asking your permission to be quoted here.

Hot Tips!

I have two girlfriends who have stores, and they are so special I want you all to have a chance to visit them, even if it's only on line. I believe so much in supporting independent stores, places where people's passions are identifiable and REAL. If we don't support places like this, all we'll be left with is chain stores that lack any sense of wonder. And anyway, these women are my friends, and friends try to help friends.

So!

Go to carefulpeach.com to see my friend Karen Morava's store, which is my go-to store when I need to buy a beautiful and unique and girly gift for someone. There's jewelry inspired by nature, bamboo linens, fabulous-o purses, wonderful soaps, dishware to die for....Well, you'll see.

Also please look at flavourcookingschool.com. I've already mentioned my friend Denise Norton's store, called flavour, in my recipe section, but this is her web site and you can see what kind of classes she offers, etc. And it's one of the coolest designs for a website I've ever seen!