Calendar of Literary Facts
1986
- Peter Taylor publishes A Summons to Memphis
- Sharon Pollock publishes Doc
- A. W. Purdy publishes The Collected Poems of Al Purdy
- Reynolds Price publishes Kate Vaiden
- Stephen Coonts publishes Flight of the Intruder
- Rita Dove publishes Thomas and Beulah
- Jane Urquhart publishes The Whirlpool
- August Wilson publishes Fences
- Sherley Anne Williams publishes Dessa Rose: A Riveting Story of the South During Slavery
- Jimmy Breslin publishes Table Money
- The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after liftoff, killing the seven-member crew
- Robert Penn Warren is named the first Poet Laureate of the United States
- Frank Peretti publishes This Present Darkness
- Henry Taylor publishes The Flying Change: Poems
- Larry McMurtry receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Lonesome Dove
- U.S. warplanes bomb Libyan targets in retaliation for a terrorist bombing in West Berlin
- The Iran-Contra arms-for-hostage scandal rocks the Reagan White House
- Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme is assassinated
- An explosion and fire in the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, leads to the evacuation of 133,000 people in the surrounding area
- The Voyager II spacecraft passes Uranus and reports the existence of 10 moons around that planet
- Sue Miller publishes The Good Mother
- Maryse Conde publishes Moi, Tituba, sorciere noire de Salem (I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem)
- Jules Feiffer receives the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning
- Jorge Luis Borges dies
- Denise Chávez publishes The Last of the Menu Girls
- Vikram Seth publishes The Golden Gate
- Louis Auchincloss publishes Honourable Men
- Henry Taylor receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Flying Change
- Kingsley Amis publishes The Old Devils
- Mark Mathabane publishes Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa
- Brian Lumley publishes Necroscope (Volume 1)
- Vikram Seth receives the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for The Golden Gate
- Andrew Lloyd Webber composes music for The Phantom of the Opera
- Joseph Brodsky publishes Less than One: Selected Essays
- Jimmy Breslin receives Pulitzer Prize for collected newspaper columns
- Pat Conroy publishes The Prince of Tides
- Wole Soyinka receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- Kingsley Amis receives Booker Prize in fiction for The Old Devils
- Christopher Isherwood dies (January 4)
- Juan Rulfo dies (January 7)
- Jaroslav Seifert dies (January 10)
- Frank Herbert dies (February 11)
- Simone de Beauvoir dies (April 14)
- Jean Genet dies (April 15)
- William Attaway dies (June 17)
- Bessie Head dies (April 17)
- Bernard Malamud dies (March 18)
- V. C. Andrews dies (December 19)
- Fritz Hochwaelder dies (October 20)
- Harriette Simpson Arnow dies (March 22)
- L. Ron Hubbard dies (January 24)
- John D. Macdonald dies (December 28)
- John Ciardi dies (March 31)
- Stanley Ellin dies (July 31)
