Calendar of Literary Facts
1987
- U.S. and Soviet representatives sign an agreement to halt the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles in Europe
- Tom Wolfe publishes The Bonfire of the Vanities
- T. Coraghessan Boyle publishes World’s End
- Eavan Boland publishes The Journey and Other Poems
- William T. Vollmann publishes You Bright and Risen Angels: A Cartoon
- Joseph Brodsky receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
- Gerald Robert Vizenor publishes Griever: An American Monkey King in China
- Kaye Gibbons publishes Ellen Foster
- Peter Taylor receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for A Summons to Memphis
- Carrie Fisher publishes Postcards from the Edge
- Fannie Flagg publishes Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
- Michael Cristofer completes his screenplay adaptation of John Updike’s novel The Witches of Eastwick
- Rita Dove receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Thomas and Beulah
- Robin Cook publishes Outbreak
- J. M. Coetzee publishes Foe
- David Adams Richards publishes Nights Below Station Street
- Brian Moore publishes The Color of Blood
- Penelope Lively receives the Booker Prize for Moon Tiger
- John Barth publishes Tidewater Tales: A Novel
- Cleveland Amory publishes The Cat Who Came for Christmas
- Ed Sanders publishes Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Selected Poems 1961-1985
- Jimmy Santiago Baca publishes Martin and Meditations on the South Valley
- Scott Turow publishes Presumed Innocent
- Rohinton Mistry publishes Tales from Firozsha Baag
- Terry McMillan publishes Mama
- William Meredith publishes Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems
- August Wilson receives an Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best play for Fences
- Toni Morrison publishes Beloved
- Alistair MacLean dies (February 2)
- Jean Anouilh dies (October 3)
- Erskine Caldwell dies (April 11)
- Margaret Laurence dies (September 15)
- Howard Moss dies (September 16)
- Carlos Drummond de Andrade dies (August 17)
- Marguerite Yourcenar dies (December 17)
- George Ryga dies (November 18)
- Emlyn Williams dies (September 25)
- Frank Marshall Davis dies (July 26)
- James Baldwin dies (November 30)
