Date Published: September 30, 2025
Publisher: She Writes Press/Tantor
Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon
Run Time: 8 hours and 4 minutes
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn't have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso's Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the "Kings of Beauty"—just as the 1970's counterculture movement began to take off.
A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane's time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author's failed relationship with her mother, and her parents' failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.
The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era's conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get "MRS" degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest "If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!" at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women's traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.
Interview with Jane Little Botkin
How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?
It was my second book that changed my process of writing. My editor asked me to read Hampton Sides’s On Desperate Ground, a book about the Korean War. The Korean War? I saw that Sides set up each chapter uniquely, not anything that a reader would notice. The narrative is braided, chapter by chapter. I learned to relax in my writing, loosely weave my narrative and tell a darn, good story in the process. No prescriptive structure, nor “pantsing” either, but a braid that has starts and stops, like rubber bands added to control the flow.
What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?
With a university press, an author submits a manuscript to an acquisitions editor. That editor sends the paper to at least two peer reviewers who have some knowledge of the subject. The reviewers report back to the press and the author with comments. With my first book at the University of Oklahoma Press (OUP), I received a review from an older academic author who claimed that I used purple prose in a section of the biography. I was indignant! I had an English degree, taught high school seniors for thirty years, and I surely knew not to use any ornate language. But darn it! He had been right. I learned that less is more when an author wants to make a powerful point. That less can be beautiful. An author should show the reader with the briefest of descriptions, both tangible and concrete, and never tell the reader what you want to impart.
What one thing would you give up to become a better writer?
I would not sit so long at my computer, writing. I know this sounds counterproductive, but I would attend more writing groups where I could learn from others. My experience as a writer, though successful, has been a series of lonely hard knocks—learning by failures and poor experiments. Isolation is not good for writers until they are ready to sit down and write!
Tell us a little about yourself? Perhaps something not many people know?
I am typically a scholarly western biographer, that is, a university press author. I love the journey, the research in places not typically considered. But before I became this type of writer, I was a Texas beauty queen—a blonde one! (No jokes please). Beauty was not the attribute I most protected, but a good brain and my education were. I love researching, the “a ha’s” aspect of making connections, and finally the actual writing.
If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?
I would learn to pay more attention to detail, the nuances of others’ speech and small gestures. I would have listened better to my elders about family stories. Now, when I write something related to family history, I regret not asking more questions and paying attention to my ancestors’ faces, reactions, etc. I have learned to be a better reader of people as I age, but as a youngster, I took everything on face value.
What is the biggest surprise that you experienced after becoming a writer?
My first book was a national award winner. This was so unexpected and so wonderful that I became hooked. Like Sally Field at the Academy Awards, I thought “They like me! They really like me!” My subsequent books have garnered successes as well.
Could you tell us a bit about your most recent book and why it is a must-read?
The Pink Dress, A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen, is a product of Covid when I could not venture out to research, after a challenge from other women authors in a San Antonio bar at a writing conference. I had been clowning at our table, imitating an East Texas beauty contestant’s thick accent when she discovered that her efforts to win Miss Congeniality at a Miss Texas-Miss America pageant had been sabotaged. My suitemates and I had eaten an enormous Texas-shaped cake that she hoped to share the next morning. I had the ladies in stitches when a literary agent said I should write the book. I had to think on this really hard. The Pink Dress is not a comic narrative, but a story about forgiveness and growth through America’s Counterculture Era. Yes, the beauty pageant business is the frame of the narrative—and there is humor—but also a dysfunctional American family, a jealous mother, a rebellion against social norms, and several self-inflicting wounds. Readers have shared with me that they cannot put the book down. They skip work, read until all hours of the night, etc. Some see themselves in my story, and it is cathartic.
One reader wrote: “This book is no happy fairytale – it shows all the dreams and illusions girls used to have when they entered the world of pageants. It’s raw, it’s real. It’s beautifully written. It’s also an incredibly feminist read, it’s a tale of a strong woman who knew what she wanted and who persisted, despite it not being quite in alignment with that time’s ‘traditional values’ of what a woman was supposed to want to do with her life.”
About the Author
A NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR, JANE...
melds personal narratives of American families often with compelling stories of western women. Jane is a late bloomer as an author. After teaching for thirty years, she was honored by the Texas State Legislature by formal resolution for her work with local history and education in 2008. She edited and directed publishing fifteen volumes of Texas local history with her former students before she decided to write on her own. Jane's first book propelled her membership on the Western Writers of America board and later as its vice president. Jane continues to judge entries for the WWA's prestigious Spur Award; reviews new book releases; authors articles for various magazines; and speaks to groups in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.
JANE'S FIRST TWO WORKS HAVE WON NUMEROUS AWARDS IN HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY AND WOMEN'S STUDIES...
including two Spur Awards, two Caroline Bancroft History Prizes, the Texas Book Award, and the Barbara Sudler Award for the best book written on the West by a woman. Jane was also a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award, High Plains Book Award, two Women Writing the West’s Willa Literary Awards, Independent Book Award, Foreword Indies Book Awards, and Sarton Book Award.
Released in fall 2024, Jane’s third book—what she calls her Covid book—is The Pink Dress, A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen, a Foreword Indies Book Award winner in pop culture and Women Writing the West's Willa Literary Award finalist in creative nonfiction. The narrative brings far West Texas to life during the 1970s’ American Counterculture era.
Jane's newest book, The Breath of a Buffalo, A Biography of Mary Ann Goodnight, will be released from the University of Oklahoma Press tentatively in fall 2026.
Today Jane blissfully escapes into her literary world in the remote White Mountain Wilderness near Nogal, New Mexico, when she is not speaking at various events or preparing for her next nonfiction book.
