Calendar of Literary Facts
1984
- Jaroslav Seifert receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- J. California Cooper publishes A Piece of Mine
- David Mamet receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Glengarry Glen Ross
- Jay McInerney publishes Bright Lights, Big City
- Pat Mora publishes Chants
- Walter Jon Williams publishes Hardwired
- Athol Fugard receives the Commonwealth Award for contribution to the American theatre
- Angela Carter publishes Nights at the Circus
- David Leavitt publishes Family Dancing
- Pete Dexter publishes God’s Pocket
- Robert Duncan publishes Ground Work: Before the War
- Vicente Aleixandre dies
- Mary Oliver receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for American Primitive
- Anti-Sikh riots rock India
- Indira Gandhi, President of India, is assassinated
- A toxic gas leak causes 2,500 deaths in Bhopal, India
- American and French medical teams discover the AIDS virus
- The Mackintosh computer, with mouse, is introduced
- Apple introduces the Macintosh desktop computer for home use
- Christopher Isherwood receives the Commonwealth Award for distinguished service in literature
- William Kennedy receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Ironweed;
- Carolyn Kizer publishes Yin: New Poems
- José Saramago publishes O año da morte de Ricardo Reis (The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis)
- Matt Cohen publishes The Spanish Doctor
- Joseph Bruchac III publishes Breaking Silence
- Milan Kundera publishes The Unbearable Lightness of Being
- George F. Walker publishes Criminals in Love
- Louise Erdrich publishes Love Medicine
- Michael Frayn publishes Benefactors: A Play in Two Acts
- Josef Skvorecky publishes Scherzo capriccioso (Dvorak in Love)
- Sonia Sanchez publishes homegirls & handgrenades
- Sharon Olds publishes The Dead and the Living
- Lynda Barry publishes Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!
- Susan Elaine Townsend publishes Womberang
- Sam Shepard receives Obie Award for Fool for Love
- J. G. Ballard publishes Empire of the Sun
- Clive Barker publishes Books of Blood, Volume One
- Charles Baxter publishes Harmony of the World
- Alison Lurie publishes Foreign Affairs
- Loren D. Estleman publishes This Old Bill
- William Gibson publishes Neuromancer
- David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross is produced
- Raymond Carver publishes Cathedral
- Tom Clancy publishes The Hunt for Red October
- Michael Palmer publishes The Sisterhood
- Anita Brookner publishes Hotel du Lac
- Helen MacInnes publishes Ride a Pale Horse
- Sara Paretsky publishes Deadlock
- Breyten Breytenbach publishes The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist
- Anita Brookner receives the Booker Prize for Hotel du Lac
- Leon Rooke receives the Governor General’s Literary Award in fiction (Canada Council) for Shakespeare’s Dog
- Frances Goodrich dies
- Jorge Guillén dies
- Josef Skvorecky receives the Governor General’s Literary Award for Best Fiction
- Ernest Buckler dies (March 4)
- Chester Himes dies (November 12)
- Julio Cortázar dies (February 12)
- Irwin Shaw dies (May 16)
- John Betjeman dies (May 19)
- Mikhail Sholokhov dies (February 21)
- Richard Brautigan dies (October 25)
- Truman Capote dies (August 25)
- Michel Foucault dies (June 25)
- Sylvia Ashton-Warner dies (April 28)
- Lillian Hellman dies (June 30)
