Calendar

The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.

1969 Literary Facts

Jimmy Breslin publishes The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight

Joan (Delano) Aiken receives the Guardian Award for The Whispering Mountain

Philip Roth publishes Portnoy’s Complaint

Les A. Murray publishes The Weatherboard Cathedral

P. H. Newby publishes Something to Answer For

Joyce Carol Oates publishes Them

P. H. Newby receives the Booker Prize for Something to Answer For

Mario Puzo publishes The Godfather

José Emilio Pacheco publishes No me preguntes como pasa el tiempo (Poemas, 1964-1968) (Don’t Ask Me How the Time Goes By: Poems, 1964-1968)

Elena Poniatowska publishes Hasta no verte, Jesus mío

Evan S. Connell Jr. publishes Mr. Bridge

Norman Mailer receives the Pulitzer Prize in letters-general nonfiction for Armies of the Night

N. Scott Momaday receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for House Made of Dawn

N. Scott Momaday publishes Way to Rainy Mountain

Adrienne Kennedy publishes Funnyhouse of a Negro

Larry Kramer produces a motion-picture version of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love, for which he wrote the screenplay

Robert Kroetsch receives the Governor General’s Literary Award in fiction

Samuel Beckett receives Nobel Prize for Literature

Abelardo B. Delgado publishes Chicano: Twenty-five Pieces of a Chicano Mind

Lonne Elder III publishes Ceremonies in Dark Old Men

Ivy Compton-Burnett dies

Barry Beckham publishes My Main Mother

John Guare receives an Obie Award as New York Drama Critics Most Promising Playwright for Cop-Out

Marvin Bell publishes A Probable Volume of Dreams

H. Rap Brown (Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) publishes Die Nigger Die!

Lucille Clifton publishes Good Times: Poems

John Fowles publishes The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Kurt Vonnegut publishes Slaughterhouse-Five

C. K. Williams publishes Lies

Robert Silverberg publishes Nightwings

Jules Feiffer receives an Obie Award for Little Murders

Tadeusz Rozewicz publishes Faces of Anxiety

Edouard Glissant publishes L’intention poetique

John Guare publishes Muzeeka and Other Plays: Cop-Out, Home Fires

Charles Gordone publishes No Place to Be Somebody: A Black-Black Comedy

American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin become the first men to set foot on the moon

The Woodstock Music and Art Festival is held near Bethel, New York, attracting an audience of 300,000

The British government sends troops into Northern Ireland to quell rioters in Belfast, Londonderry, and elsewhere

Floyd Dell dies

Howard Sackler receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Great White Hope

George Oppen receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Of Being Numerous

Jean Stafford publishes her Collected Stories

The Stonewall revolt in New York City marks the beginning of the American gay liberation movement

Edwidge Danticat is born

Explore: The Farming of Bones, Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I'm Dying

John Kennedy Toole dies

Explore: A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

Witold Gombrowicz dies

Explore: Witold Gombrowicz

Frank Loesser dies

Jack Kerouac dies

Explore: On the Road, Jack Kerouac

Jose Maria Arguedas dies

Explore: José María Arguedas