The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.
1985 Literary Facts
Keri Hulme receives the Booker Prize for The Bone People
Marguerite Duras publishes La Douleur (The War: A Memoir)
Peter Taylor publishes The Old Forest and Other Stories
Claude Simon receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
Vikram Seth receives the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asian Region) for The Humble Administrator’s Garden
Jeanette Armstrong publishes Slash
Julian Barnes publishes Flaubert’s Parrot
Maeve Binchy publishes Echoes
Anne Tyler publishes The Accidental Tourist
President Ronald Reagan signs bill into law empowering the Library of Congress to name a Poet Laureate
Neil Bissoondath publishes Digging Up the Mountains
Vikram Seth publishes The Humble Administrator’s Garden
Dan Simmons publishes Song of Kali
Garrison Keillor publishes Lake Wobegon Days
George F. Walker receives the Governor General’s Literary Award in drama for Criminals in Love
Jeanette Winterson publishes Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
E. B. White dies
Hisaye Yamamoto publishes Seventeen Syllables: 5 Stories of Japanese American Life
Larry Duplechan publishes Eight Days a Week
Janet Campbell Hale publishes The Jailing of Cecelia Capture
Leonardo Boff publishes Church: Charism and Power; Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church
Dominick Dunne publishes The Two Mrs.Grenvilles
Bret Easton Ellis publishes Less Than Zero
Carolyn Kizer receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Yin: New Poems
Elizabeth Cook-Lynn publishes Seek the House of Relatives
Paul Durcan publishes The Berlin Wall Cafe
Jacqueline Briskin publishes Too Much, Too Soon
Orson Scott Card publishes Ender’s Game
Jonathan Kellerman publishes When the Bough Breaks
Larry McMurtry publishes Lonesome Dove
Carlos Fuentes publishes El gringo viejo (The Old Gringo)
Spalding Gray receives an Obie Award for Swimming to Cambodia
Robert Graves dies
Spalding Gray publishes Swimming to Cambodia
Louise Gluck publishes The Triumph of Achilles
Pat Booth publishes Palm Beach
Caryl Phillips publishes The Final Passage
Italo Calvino dies
Linda Hogan publishes Seeing through the Sun
The Chinese government institutes a bureau to review and control all publications
British scientists discover a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica
An earthquake strikes Mexico City, killing 7,000 people
Live-Aid rock concert in London and New York is held to provide famine relief for Ethiopia
Alison Lurie receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Foreign Affairs
Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine receive the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Sunday in the Park with George
Basil Bunting dies
Explore: Basil Bunting, Briggflatts
Jacques Ferron dies
Explore: Jacques Ferron
Theodore Sturgeon dies
Explore: Godbody, More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
Josephine Miles dies
Explore: Josephine Miles
Abe Burrows dies
Heinrich Boell dies
Explore: The Clown, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, Heinrich Böll
Shiva Naipaul dies
Explore: Fireflies, Shiva Naipaul
Taylor Caldwell dies
Explore: Captains and the Kings, Dear and Glorious Physician, Taylor Caldwell
Larry Shue dies
Explore: The Foreigner, Larry Shue
Helen MacInnes dies
Explore: The Salzburg Connection, Helen MacInnes
Alex La Guma dies
Explore: A Walk in the Night, Alex La Guma, Blankets
Philip Larkin dies
Explore: Philip Larkin, Dockery and Son