American novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry (b. 1936), a native of North Texas, received degrees from North Texas State University (B.A., 1958) and Rice University (M.A., 1960). In 1960, while he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University alongside author Ken Kesey, McMurtry developed a reputation as a rare book scout, and later opened used bookstores in Houston and in the neighborhood of Georgetown in Washington, D.C. He also owns the Booked Up bookstore in Archer City, TX, one of the largest used bookstores in the country, which he opened in 1988. It nearly closed down in 2005 until the outpouring of public support convinced him otherwise.

McMurtry won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove (1985) and has written several acclaimed novels, yet his name is best known to the general public through film and television adaptations of his work. The 1963 motion picture Hud, starring Paul Newman, was the first of such adaptations, based on McMurtry’s Horseman, Pass By (1961). Then Peter Bogdanovich directed The Last Picture Show (1971), a coming-of-age story set in 1950s small-town Texas based on McMurtry’s eponymous 1966 novel. Leaving Cheyenne (1963) became the motion picture Lovin’ Molly in 1974, and James L. Brooks’ screen adaptation of the 1975 Terms of Endearment won five Academy Awards (including Best Picture) in 1984. And in 1989, CBS turned Lonesome Dove into an enormously popular television miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones.

Most recently, McMurtry garnered an Academy Award in 2006 with Diana Ossana for the screenplay of Brokeback Mountain, adapted from a short story by E. Annie Proulx. In addition to novels and screenplays, McMurtry has also published various essays and a memoir. The majority of his works are set in his native Texas, whether in "old West" times or in the twentieth century.