For one long weekend every year, Abbie Brown gets to unleash her inner Queen. She has volunteered for the True/False Film Fest — an annual documentary festival that transforms Columbia into a utopia of cinema, art and music — for 12 years. For the last 7 years, she has served as a Q Queen. Brown said the film fest royalty are the “mobile, flamboyant information stations” that wrangle guests and manage questions at every event venue. Q Queens craft their costumes — whether glittering, bedazzled princess dresses or handmade superhero suits — to match the confident demeanor needed for the job. Brown, a typically introverted university librarian that dresses in a uniform of flowy black clothes and a pair of rainbow glasses, spent months assembling her costume. After donning layer upon layer of crinoline skirts, applying a full face of makeup and fastening a wig as high as the heavens, she completed the transformation into a Q Queen.
