Calendar of Literary Facts
1981
- Elias Canetti receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- Harvey Fierstein publishes Torch Song Trilogy
- Toni Morrison publishes Tar Baby
- Andrea Lee publishes Russian Journal
- Cherrie Moraga publishes This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
- Mavis Gallant publishes Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories
- David Henry Hwang receives an Obie Award for best play for F.O.B.
- John Gardner publishes License Renewed
- Leroy V. Quintana publishes Sangre
- Beth Henley receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Crimes of the Heart
- Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems is published
- Sharon Pollock publishes Blood Relations and Other Plays
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko publishes Wild Berries
- Nadine Gordimer receives the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature
- Eugenio Montale dies
- The Pulitzer Prize in fiction is awarded to the late John Kennedy Toole for A Confederacy of Dunces
- U.S. President Ronald Reagan is wounded by a gunman in Washington, D.C.
- Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is assassinated
- IBM introduces to personal computer (PC) for home use
- Caroline Gordon dies
- John Updike publishes Rabbit Is Rich
- Joy Nozomi Kogawa publishes Obasan
- Tennessee Williams receives the Commonwealth Award for Distinguished Service in Dramatic Arts
- Arturo Uslar pietri publishes La isla de Robinson
- Mark Helprin publishes Ellis Island and Other Stories
- Ellen Gilchrist publishes In the Land of Dreamy Dreams
- Andrew M. Greeley publishes The Cardinal Sins
- Paul Green dies
- James Schuyler receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Morning of the Poem
- George Steiner publishes The Portage to San Cristobal of A. H.
- The National Humanities Alliance is founded
- David Bradley Jr. publishes The Chaneysville Incident
- Peter Shaffer publishes Amadeus
- Tama Janowitz publishes American Dad
- The Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon is published
- Salman Rushdie receives the Booker Prize for Midnight’s Children
- Linda Pastan publishes Waiting for My Life
- Bryan F. Griffin publishes Panic among the Philistines in two parts in Harper’s Magazine
- Demetrio Aguilera Malta dies
- Robert Olen Butler publishes The Alleys of Eden
- Robert Bly publishes The Man in the Black Coat Turns
- Charles Fuller receives an Obie Award for Zooman and the Sign
- Mark Medoff publishes Children of a Lesser God
- Ntozake Shange receives Obie Award for Mother Courage and Her Children
- Raymond Carver publishes What We Talk about When We Talk about Love
- Mavis Gallant receives the Governor General’s Literary Award for Home Truths: Selected Canadian Stories
- Enid Bagnold dies
- Barbara Cartland publishes Dollars for the Duke
- Salman Rushdie publishes Midnight’s Children
- Martin Cruz Smith publishes Gorky Park
- Sidney (“Paddy”) Chayefsky dies (August 1)
- Nelson Algren dies (May 9)
- Meyer Levin dies (July 9)
- Ketti Frings dies (February 11)
- Anita Loos dies (August 18)
- William Saroyan dies (May 18)
- Mary Chase dies (October 20)
