New Mccarthy Papers Open

SAN MARCOS, TX (October 7, 2025) – The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University is set to open a new, highly anticipated trove of Cormac McCarthy papers. Comprised of personal material, correspondence, juvenilia, and work that shows the development of his later manuscripts, the new addition offers the public its first insights into the personal and creative life of one of the world’s most celebrated writers. The new material represents nothing less than a doubling in size of the already substantial McCarthy papers held by the Wittliff since 2007 and researched by students and scholars from around the world.

Dianne Luce, one of the world’s leading McCarthy scholars and the author of many books on McCarthy and his work, most recently Embracing Vocation: Cormac McCarthy's Writing Life, 1959-1974, will be one of the first to see the new collection when it opens on October 27, 2025. “The opening of the second batch of Cormac McCarthy's drafts and correspondence is an unparalleled event for scholars of his work,” Luce says. “We expect the new papers will exponentially expand our understanding of his writing career and his life. The combined McCarthy papers comprise one of the foremost archives for an American writer in the country, and they will attract scholars from here and abroad for decades, even centuries. These invaluable papers could not be in better hands than at the Wittliff.”

Katie Salzmann, Lead Archivist for The Wittliff, dedicated over 500 hours to processing the McCarthy addition. “Every day brought a new discovery,” she says. “As I worked through the collection, I kept running across items – letters, photographs, notebook pages – that I know will captivate our seasoned researchers and will be invaluable to those just beginning their study of McCarthy. I’m excited to see how readers respond to this material, and for the scholarship that will emerge as they shed new light on McCarthy’s extraordinary literary legacy. I’m also eager to see how McCarthy’s non-literary work is received. He was a voracious reader and an incisive thinker, and this new material provides a fuller glimpse into his scientific mind.”

Wittliff Director David Coleman celebrates the surprising wholeness of the new materials. “McCarthy was a famously reticent public figure,” Coleman says, “and very few people realized that he had preserved such extensive records of his own life. This new material will sustain researchers for generations to come.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) is considered one of the world’s most significant writers, known for memorable characters, dense prose, the use of dark metaphor punctuated by violence, and an unerring facility with the dialect of the American South and Southwest. Often compared in his early work to William Faulkner, McCarthy rose to fame later in his career with The Border Trilogy. His novel All the Pretty Horses won the National Book Award, and another, The Road, won the

Pulitzer Prize. His novel, No Country for Old Men, was adapted into film by Ethan and Joel Coen and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The new addition opens to researchers by appointment on October 27, 2025. For more information about the Wittliff Collections, to schedule a research visit, or to discuss the McCarthy Archives, visit www.thewittliffcollections.txstate.edu.