Booked Up to be Larry McMurtry Literary Center
Booked Up, the famed bookstore owned by the late Larry Mc-Murtry, is set to be transformed into The Larry McMurtry Literary Center following the sale of the building on Archer City’s South Center Street to the Archer City Writers Workshop.
ACWW, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving McMurtry’s literary legacy, purchased the bookstore from Magnolia Network founders Chip and Joanna Gaines, who acquired it after Mr. McMurtry’s death in 2021. The Larry McMurtry Literary Center (LMLC) will honor the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s life and career and provide public access to his collection of 175,000 rare books. The ACWW is funded, in part, from royalties from Pastures of the Empty Page: Fellow Writers on the Life and Legacy of Larry McMurtry, a collection of essays by prominent American writers published in 2023 to honor McMurtry.
The literary center, housed in the building that was once the heart of McMurtry’s writing and book-collecting world, will serve as a hub for writers and literary enthusiasts.
“Booked Up was the center of Larry’s literary universe and for the hundreds of writers who participated in the Archer City Writers Workshop over the last two decades,” ACWW’s director George Getschow said in a statement. Mr. Getshow said the group does not yet have a projected opening date for the center.
The LMLC will join other renowned literary centers across the United States, including those dedicated to John Steinbeck, Emily Dickinson, and Willa Cather, hoping that it will become a popular tourist destination and provide cultural and economic benefits to Archer City, the statement said.
The Willa Cather Literary Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska draws 8,000 to 10,000 visitors annually, bringing both attention and revenue to the small town.
Although Booked Up shut its doors over two years ago, Mc-Murtry fans continue to visit Archer City, hoping to see the author’s legendary bookstore. Dotty Hudson, owner of the Spur Hotel, noted that visitors “come to town hoping to see Larry and his rare book collection, not realizing that Larry’s gone and his bookstore shut down,” she said.
Larry McMurtry’s siblings, including his brother Charlie and sisters Sue Deen and Judith Mc-Lemore, expressed their excitement for the project. “For Larry, Booked Up was a sacred place,” said Deen, who managed the store for seven years. “Now we can all celebrate Booked Up’s rebirth into a literary center in Larry’s honor.”