Calendar of Literary Facts
1994
- Paleolithic cave paintings are discovered in the Ardèche region of France by Jean-Marie Chauvet, for whom the cave is today named
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia after two decades of living in exile
- Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa
- The Hutus and Tutsis conduct genocidal warfare against each other in Rwanda
- Yusef Komunyakaa receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems
- E. L. Doctorow publishes The Waterworks
- Carol Shields receives Governor General’s Award for English-language fiction
- Edwidge Danticat publishes Breath, Eyes, Memory
- Leonid Leonov dies
- Nelson DeMille publishes Spencerville
- Juan Carlos Onetti dies
- W. S. Merwin publishes Travels
- Henry Louis Gates Jr. publishes Colored People: A Memoir
- Kenzaburo Oe receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- E. Annie Proulx receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Shipping News
- James Kelman receives the Booker Prize for How Late It Was, How Late
- Russian troops attack and occupy the breakaway republic of Chechnya
- Peter Taylor dies (November 2)
- James Clavell dies (September 6)
- Charles Bukowski dies (March 9)
- Amy Clampitt dies (September 10)
- Elias Canetti dies (August 13)
- Alice Childress dies (August 14)
- Ralph Ellison dies (April 16)
- Lewis Grizzard dies (March 20)
- John Osborne dies (December 24)
- Eugene Ionesco dies (March 28)
- Russell Kirk dies (April 29)
