Calendar of Literary Facts
Linda Pastan publishes PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (December 0) J. M. Coetzee receives the Booker Prize for Life and Times of Michael K. (December 0) Barbara Taylor Bradford publishes Voice of the Heart (December 0) Malcolm Bradbury publishes Rates of Exchange (December 0) Amy Clampitt publishes The Kingfisher (December 0) Thomas Berger publishes The Feud (December 0) Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Mists of Avalon (December 0) Sandra Cisneros publishes The House on Mango Street (December 0) Oscar Hijuelos publishes Our House in the Last World (December 0) Leon Rooke publishes Shakespeare’s Dog (December 0) Timothy Zahn publishes The Blackcollar (December 0) David Henry Hwang publishes F.O.B. (December 0) Elmore Leonard publishes Stick (December 0) Sir William Golding receives the Nobel Prize for Literature for his complete body of work (December 0)
Horton Foote publishes Tender Mercies (December 0) Harvey Fierstein publishes La Cage aux folles (December 0) Joseph F. Girzone publishes Joshua (December 0)
Robert B. Parker publishes PM/AM: New and Selected Poems (December 0) Marsha Norman receives the Pulitzer Prize in drama for ’Night, Mother (December 0) J. M. Coetzee publishes The Life and Times of Michael K (December 0) Ariel Dorfman publishes Widows (December 0) Jamaica Kincaid publishes At the Bottom of the River (December 0) Martha Grimes publishes The Anodyne Necklace (December 0) William Kennedy publishes Ironweed (December 0) Vaclav Havel publishes A Private View (December 0) William Trevor Cox publishes Fools of Fortune (December 0) Beatrice Culleton publishes In Search of April Raintree (December 0)
Alice Walker receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Color Purple (December 0) Lanford Wilson receives an Obie Award (with Circle Repertory Company) for sustained achievement in Off-Broadway theater (December 0) John Edgar Wideman publishes Sent for You Yesterday (December 0) Athol Fugard publishes “Master Harold”And the Boys (December 0) Larry Shue’s drama The Foreigner (December 0)
The compact disc (CD) is introduced (December 0)
A famine in Ethiopia, brought on by drought, affects millions (December 0)
U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), dubbed “Star Wars” by Senator Edward Kennedy and other opponents (December 0)
U.S. troops invade and liberate Grenada (December 0)
Violence erupts between the Sinhalese and the Tamils in Sri Lanka (December 0)
Galway Kinnell receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Selected Poems (December 0) Mary Oliver publishes American Primitive (December 0) Tennessee Williams dies. (Explore: The Glass Menagerie , A Streetcar Named Desire , Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , Tennessee Williams ,
What is Tennessee Williams' literary style?
I need to compare Williams to... ) (February 25)
Christina Stead dies. (Explore: The Little Hotel , The Man Who Loved Children , House of All Nations , Christina Stead ) (March 31)
Owen Dodson dies. (Explore: The Poetry of Dodson , Owen Dodson ) (June 21)
Alden Nowlan dies. (Explore: Alden Nowlan ) (June 27)
Kenneth Millar dies. (Explore: The Chill , The Underground Man ) (July 11)
Gabrielle Roy dies. (Explore: Gabrielle Roy , The Tin Flute ) (July 13)
Luis Buñuel dies. (Explore: Luis Buñuel ) (July 29)
Yves Theriault dies (October 20)
A truck-bomb destroys the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 marines (October 23)
Paul de Man dies. (Explore: Blindness and Insight ) (December 21)
