Larry McMurtry

Life & Legacy

Larry Jeff McMurtry (June 3, 1936 – March 25, 2021) was an American novelist, essayist, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. During a career spanning six decades, he wrote more than thirty novels, numerous essays and memoirs, and approximately fifty screenplays. Films adapted from McMurtry's works earned 34 Academy Award nominations with 13 wins, and his novels were the basis for several television miniseries.
McMurtry's early novels, including Horseman, Pass By (1961), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), examined the decline of small-town and rural Texas life; all three were adapted into major films. His 1985 book Lonesome Dove, often considered his magnum opus, won the Pulitzer Prize. The novel, which follows several retired Texas Rangers on a cattle drive from Texas to Montana, was one of the most popular American novels of the late twentieth century, and it was adapted into a popular television miniseries. The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were also adapted as miniseries. He later won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005) alongside his longtime writing partner, Diana Ossana.
In addition to his literary career, McMurtry was one of the United States' most prominent antiquarian booksellers. He operated bookstores in Washington, D.C., and Archer City, Texas, where he amassed a stock of nearly half a million volumes. As president of PEN American from 1989 to 1991, he was an advocate for free speech. In 2014, he received the National Humanities Medal.