The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.
1983 Literary Facts
Linda Pastan publishes PM/AM: New and Selected Poems
J. M. Coetzee receives the Booker Prize for Life and Times of Michael K.
Barbara Taylor Bradford publishes Voice of the Heart
Malcolm Bradbury publishes Rates of Exchange
Amy Clampitt publishes The Kingfisher
Thomas Berger publishes The Feud
Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Mists of Avalon
Sandra Cisneros publishes The House on Mango Street
Oscar Hijuelos publishes Our House in the Last World
Leon Rooke publishes Shakespeare’s Dog
Timothy Zahn publishes The Blackcollar
David Henry Hwang publishes F.O.B.
Elmore Leonard publishes Stick
Sir William Golding receives the Nobel Prize for Literature for his complete body of work
Horton Foote publishes Tender Mercies
Harvey Fierstein publishes La Cage aux folles
Joseph F. Girzone publishes Joshua
Robert B. Parker publishes PM/AM: New and Selected Poems
Marsha Norman receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for ’Night, Mother
J. M. Coetzee publishes The Life and Times of Michael K
Ariel Dorfman publishes Widows
Jamaica Kincaid publishes At the Bottom of the River
Martha Grimes publishes The Anodyne Necklace
William Kennedy publishes Ironweed
Vaclav Havel publishes A Private View
William Trevor Cox publishes Fools of Fortune
Beatrice Culleton publishes In Search of April Raintree
Alice Walker receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Color Purple
Lanford Wilson receives an Obie Award (with Circle Repertory Company) for sustained achievement in Off-Broadway theater
John Edgar Wideman publishes Sent for You Yesterday
Athol Fugard publishes “Master Harold”And the Boys
Larry Shue’s drama The Foreigner is produced
The compact disc (CD) is introduced
A famine in Ethiopia, brought on by drought, affects millions
U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed “Star Wars” by Senator Edward Kennedy and other opponents
U.S. troops invade and liberate Grenada
Violence erupts between the Sinhalese and the Tamils in Sri Lanka
Galway Kinnell receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Selected Poems
Mary Oliver publishes American Primitive
Tennessee Williams dies
Explore: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams, Key characteristics of Tennessee Williams' literary style
Christina Stead dies
Explore: The Man Who Loved Children, Christina Stead
Owen Dodson dies
Alden Nowlan dies
Explore: Alden Nowlan
Kenneth Millar dies
Explore: The Underground Man
Gabrielle Roy dies
Explore: Gabrielle Roy, The Tin Flute
Luis Buñuel dies
Explore: Luis Buñuel
Yves Theriault dies
A truck-bomb destroys the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 marines
Paul de Man dies