IT probably wouldn’t be accurate to say that the most interesting people within a 75-mile radius were gathered at the home of Richard and Lisa Howorth here on a recent Thursday evening, but, then again, the claim might not be too far off.

In the Howorths’ living room, John Hodgman, the humorist and self-described “famous minor television personality” of Apple commercial fame, was chatting with the actress Joey Lauren Adams. John T. Edge, a food writer, was hanging out in the kitchen, near a big pot of gumbo Ms. Howorth cooked the night before, as was a mellifluously named Mississippian, Semmes Luckett, who was telling Hunter S. Thompson stories (they were buddies in Aspen). Roy Blount Jr., meanwhile, held forth in the dining room, drinking whiskey and proving that a good party can sustain more than one professional humorist.

Other guests included the novelist Jack Pendarvis; a co-founder of Fat Possum Records, Matthew Johnson; and the author Dean Faulkner Wells, whose uncle, William Faulkner, is Oxford’s most famous son. At some point, the New York-based singer and songwriter known as Milton and members of his backup band, who were passing through Oxford on tour, began twisting to ’60s dance records, like the Bar-Kays’ “Soul Finger.” It was, as they say, that kind of night.

The link among all of these people is the Howorths, who own Square Books, a local institution and one of the country’s better known independent bookstores. (They also operate an annex, Off Square Books, and a store specializing in children’s books.) Located in a 19th-century brick building on Oxford’s elegantly preserved town square, the store is a popular stop on book tours, and the couple has become friendly with a lot of writers in the 29 years they’ve been in business. Being naturally hospitable people, they often invite visiting authors to stay at their five-bedroom house instead of in a hotel.

Mr. Hodgman, who is a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, and Mr. Blount — both in town to appear on “Thacker Mountain Radio,” a variety program co-created by Mr. Howorth and broadcast live each Thursday from Off Square Books — were the writers-in-residence on this particular night. But on any given week, especially in the fall, the publishing industry’s busy season, a best-selling novelist or first-time author is likely to be sleeping in the downstairs guest room.

"We run a pretty relaxed household,” said Ms. Howorth, a petite woman who wears her hair close-cropped, like a chic art student. To stay there, “you have to be able to put up with dog hair and a certain amount of slack housekeeping,” she said, which may explain why the Howorths’ male guests outnumber their female ones.

The novelists Nick McDonell and the journalist Nicholas Dawidoff were recent guests; the full guestbook is slightly longer than Joyce’s “Ulysses” and includes such literary lions as Richard Ford, Ann Patchett, Alexander McCall Smith, Donna Tartt and Madison Smartt Bell.

As the Howorths’ 27-year-old daughter, Claire, explained it, her parents “basically run a B & B for writers,” although there’s no cost and the entertainment tends to be livelier than a traditional innkeeper might provide. Take, for instance, the time Ms. Howorth took the British novelist Graham Swift on a road trip through the Delta. Or the many nights when the couple piled into their car and drove a writer out to a juke joint in Chulahoma, Miss., owned by the bluesman Junior Kimbrough, who died in 1998. “It’s 30 miles away,” she said, “but what’s 30 miles when you have a car and a bottle of bourbon?”

For authors engaged in the often dispiriting ritual known as the book tour, rolling into Oxford is a blessed respite.

“When you go to a bookstore, you think of it as a lonely outpost, but this is the opposite of a lonely outpost,” said Mr. Blount, whose affection for the Howorths and their store is such that in the author photo for his most recent book, “Alphabet Juice,” he’s wearing a Square Books ball cap.

Gary Fisketjon, an editor at Knopf, has sent many writers to Oxford and himself stayed with the Howorths. “I love their house — it’s amazing how many people you can wad in that place,” he said. Asked to describe a typical evening, Mr. Fisketjon said: “It’s food, it’s music, it’s plenty of whiskey. They are people who know how to have a good time.”

Showing writers a good time was, in the beginning, a strategy as much as an inclination. “It was hard for us to attract writers to do readings here 30 years ago,” Ms. Howorth said. Oxford is home to the University of Mississippi, but “there were almost no bars, few restaurants. We’d lure them here on the promise that we’d entertain them.”

Soon after the Howorths opened Square Books, in 1979, a few things happened to secure their role as literary hosts. The university made two important hires — Bill Ferris, a folklorist who became head of the school’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and Willie Morris, the legendary Harper’s editor, who was brought in as a writer-in-residence. Both men were friends with big-name writers and academics, whom they persuaded to visit Square Books.

“I remember Bill got Allen Ginsberg to come,” Mr. Howorth said. “His book signing was like a performance. One woman wanted the dedication made out only to her first name, and Ginsberg told her, ‘I don’t do first names unless I’ve slept with you.’ ”