Calendar of Literary Facts
1971
- Wallace Stegner publishes Angle of Repose
- Ernest J. Gaines publishes The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
- Derek Walcott receives an Obie Award for Dream on Monkey Mountain
- Stephen Sondheim’s Follies is produced
- Barbara W. Tuchman publishes Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945
- Ricardo Sanchez publishes Canto y grito mi liberacion/The Liberation of a Chicano Mind
- Paul Zindel receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
- W. S. Merwin receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Carrier of Ladders
- Antonine Maillet publishes La Sagouine
- Israel Horovitz publishes The Honest-to-God Schnozzola
- E. L. Doctorow publishes The Book of Daniel
- Maya Angelou publishes Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie
- Athol Fugard publishes Boesman and Lena
- Joseph A. Walker receives an Obie Award for The River Niger
- Athol Fugard receives an Obie Award for distinguished foreign play for Boesman and Lena
- “Ping-pong diplomacy” begins an era of détente between the U.S. and China
- The CAT-SCAN (three-dimensional imaging of the human brain) is developed in the U.K.
- Salyut, the first manned space station, becomes operational
- B. F. Skinner publishes Beyond Freedom and Dignity
- Paul de Man publishes Blindness and Insight
- The New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers, a selection of leaked government documents revealing high-level deceit in prosecuting and publicizing the war in Vietnam
- James Wright publishes Collected Poems
- Jay Wright publishes The Homecoming Singer
- Herman Wouk publishes The Winds of War
- John Gardner Jr. publishes Grendel
- Paul Zindel publishes The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
- Judith Viorst publishes The Tenth Good Thing about Barney
- Susan Howatch publishes Penmarric
- Andrei Codrescu publishes Why I Can’t Talk on the Telephone
- Alice Munro publishes Lives of Girls and Women
- Frederick Buechner publishes Lion Country
- William Peter Blatty publishes The Exorcist
- Ed Bullins publishes The Fabulous Miss Marie
- V. S. Naipaul publishes In a Free State
- Cynthia Ozick publishes The Pagan Rabbi, and Other Stories
- The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara is published
- Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Short Stories is published
- Okot p’Bitek publishes Two Songs: Song of Prisoner [and] Song of Malaya
- David Rabe receives an Obie Award for distinguished playwriting for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
- Malcolm Muggeridge publishes Something Beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta
- V. S. Naipaul receives the Booker Prize for In a Free State
- P. D. James publishes Shroud for a Nightingale
- Jerzy Kosinski publishes Being There
- June Jordan publishes His Own Where
- Howard Moss publishes Selected Poems
- Geoffrey Hill publishes Mercian Hymns
- Alan Bennett publishes Getting On
- Ezekiel Mphahlele publishes The Wanderers
- Marvin Bell publishes The Escape into You
- Pablo Neruda receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- Erma Bombeck publishes Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own
- Mary Lavin publishes her Collected Stories
- Stevie Smith dies (March 7)
- Ralph J. Bunche dies (December 9)
- Ella Deloria dies (February 12)
- Ogden Nash dies (May 19)
- Giorgos Seferis dies (September 20)
