The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.
1971 Literary Facts
Mary Lavin publishes her Collected Stories
Malcolm Muggeridge publishes Something Beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta
David Rabe receives an Obie Award for distinguished playwriting for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel
Okot p’Bitek publishes Two Songs: Song of Prisoner [and] Song of Malaya
Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Short Stories is published
The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara is published
Cynthia Ozick publishes The Pagan Rabbi, and Other Stories
V. S. Naipaul publishes In a Free State
Ed Bullins publishes The Fabulous Miss Marie
William Peter Blatty publishes The Exorcist
Frederick Buechner publishes Lion Country
Alice Munro publishes Lives of Girls and Women
V. S. Naipaul receives the Booker Prize for In a Free State
Erma Bombeck publishes Just Wait Till You Have Children of Your Own
Pablo Neruda receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
Marvin Bell publishes The Escape into You
Ezekiel Mphahlele publishes The Wanderers
Alan Bennett publishes Getting On
Geoffrey Hill publishes Mercian Hymns
Howard Moss publishes Selected Poems
June Jordan publishes His Own Where
Jerzy Kosinski publishes Being There
P. D. James publishes Shroud for a Nightingale
Andrei Codrescu publishes Why I Can’t Talk on the Telephone
Susan Howatch publishes Penmarric
Maya Angelou publishes Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie
E. L. Doctorow publishes The Book of Daniel
Israel Horovitz publishes The Honest-to-God Schnozzola
Antonine Maillet publishes La Sagouine
W. S. Merwin receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Carrier of Ladders
Paul Zindel receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Ricardo Sanchez publishes Canto y grito mi liberacion/The Liberation of a Chicano Mind
Barbara W. Tuchman publishes Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945
Stephen Sondheim’s Follies is produced
Derek Walcott receives an Obie Award for Dream on Monkey Mountain
Ernest J. Gaines publishes The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Athol Fugard publishes Boesman and Lena
Joseph A. Walker receives an Obie Award for The River Niger
Athol Fugard receives an Obie Award for distinguished foreign play for Boesman and Lena
Judith Viorst publishes The Tenth Good Thing about Barney
Paul Zindel publishes The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
John Gardner Jr. publishes Grendel
Herman Wouk publishes The Winds of War
Jay Wright publishes The Homecoming Singer
James Wright publishes Collected Poems
The New York Times publishes the Pentagon Papers, a selection of leaked government documents revealing high-level deceit in prosecuting and publicizing the war in Vietnam
Paul de Man publishes Blindness and Insight
B. F. Skinner publishes Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Salyut, the first manned space station, becomes operational
The CAT-SCAN (three-dimensional imaging of the human brain) is developed in the U.K.
“Ping-pong diplomacy” begins an era of détente between the U.S. and China
Wallace Stegner publishes Angle of Repose
Ella Deloria dies
Stevie Smith dies
Explore: Stevie Smith
Ogden Nash dies
Explore: Ogden Nash
Giorgos Seferis dies
Explore: George Seferis, Mythistorema
Ralph J. Bunche dies