Larry McMurtry [1] will receive the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award this week because he is a “bibliophile par excellence.” That’s how City Librarian Fontayne Holmes describes the novelist, essayist and screenwriter. “He really is such a book person in every single meaning of the word, as a bookstore owner, as a book collector, as a writer and as an incredible reader of literature,” she said.

McMurtry, who has published 41 books, is known for depicting an un-idealized vision of the Old West and his native Texas. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1985 novel Lonesome Dove, which became a television mini-series starring Robert Duvall, Tommy Lee Jones and Danny Glover in 1989.

His store, Booked Up [2], is in Archer City, TX.