Skip to Content

Larry McMurtry

Photo of Larry McMurtry sculpture

Larry McMurtry is a Texan novelist, essayist, bookseller, and screenwriter. His novels include Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966), and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films earning a total of 26 Oscar nominations, winning ten. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurtry and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Lonesome Dove, his 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, was adapted into a television miniseries by Bill Wittliff that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations, winning seven. The subsequent three novels in his Lonesome Dove series were adapted as three more miniseries, earning eight more Emmy nominations.

According to Texas Monthly, McMurtry "has done more to shape the country’s understanding of Texas than anyone before or since." The Wittliff Collections has the manuscripts to several of McMurtry's works, and is the home to the Lonesome Dove miniseries production archive.