McCullers's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, is now owned by Columbus State University and is the central location of the university's Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians.[27] The center is dedicated to preserving the legacy of McCullers; to nurturing American writers and musicians; to educating young people; and to fostering the literary and musical life of Columbus, the state of Georgia, and the American South. To that end, the center operates a museum in the Smith–McCullers' home, presents extensive educational and cultural programs for the community, maintains an ever-growing archive of materials related to the life and work of McCullers, and offers fellowships for writers and composers who live for periods of time in the Smith-McCullers home in Columbus.
While the center operates out of the Smith–McCullers house, the writer's childhood home and museum is open to the public.
In 1944, when McCullers's father died, her mother left Columbus and moved to Nyack, New York, where she bought her daughter's famed Nyack home. McCullers lived with her mother and sister off and on in this house for a number of years, eventually buying the house from her mother. McCullers was living in this house when she died in 1967. In December 2006 the house in Nyack was added to the National Register of Historic Places.[28]
McCullers's therapist and longtime friend, Dr. Mary E. Mercer, bequeathed the house in Nyack to Columbus State University's Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, the same center that owns and operates out of McCullers's childhood home in Columbus, Georgia.[29] At Dr. Mercer's death in late April 2013, the McCullers Center inherited not only the house but also many artifacts and documents that shed light on the last ten years of McCullers's life.
The two former McCullers houses now owned by Columbus State University together contain the world's most extensive research collection on the author.
The Rainey-McCullers School of the Arts in Columbus, Georgia, is named in honor of McCullers and fellow Columbus native Ma Rainey.
Charles Bukowski wrote a poem about Carson McCullers.[30]
She influenced Edward Albee who adapted her novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe into a play.
In 2020, American writer Jenn Shapland published My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, which recounts Shapland's discovery of McCullers' letters to Swiss writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach. Shapland's book contends McCullers was queer, or closeted.[31] Other critics have noted that "McCullers camouflaged her love for women in her fiction, [and] gay and lesbian themes are inarguably present in her work."[17] Mary Dearborn published her book, Carson McCullers: A Life, in 2024.[32]
