The Calendar of Literary Facts contains more than 6,500 events in literary history.
1986 Literary Facts
Kingsley Amis receives Booker Prize in fiction for The Old Devils
Wole Soyinka receives the Nobel Prize for Literature
Vikram Seth receives the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for The Golden Gate
Kingsley Amis publishes The Old Devils
Louis Auchincloss publishes Honourable Men
Vikram Seth publishes The Golden Gate
Denise Chávez publishes The Last of the Menu Girls
Jorge Luis Borges dies
Jules Feiffer receives the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning
Mark Mathabane publishes Kaffir Boy: The True Story of a Black Youth’s Coming of Age in Apartheid South Africa
Brian Lumley publishes Necroscope (Volume 1)
Andrew Lloyd Webber composes music for The Phantom of the Opera
Jimmy Breslin receives Pulitzer Prize for collected newspaper columns
Pat Conroy publishes The Prince of Tides
Maryse Conde publishes Moi, Tituba, sorciere noire de Salem (I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem)
Jimmy Breslin publishes Table Money
Sherley Anne Williams publishes Dessa Rose: A Riveting Story of the South During Slavery
August Wilson publishes Fences
Jane Urquhart publishes The Whirlpool
Rita Dove publishes Thomas and Beulah
Stephen Coonts publishes Flight of the Intruder
Reynolds Price publishes Kate Vaiden
Joseph Brodsky publishes Less than One: Selected Essays
A. W. Purdy publishes The Collected Poems of Al Purdy
Sharon Pollock publishes Doc
The space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after liftoff, killing the seven-member crew
Robert Penn Warren is named the first Poet Laureate of the United States
Sue Miller publishes The Good Mother
The Voyager II spacecraft passes Uranus and reports the existence of 10 moons around that planet
An explosion and fire in the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine, leads to the evacuation of 133,000 people in the surrounding area
Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme is assassinated
The Iran-Contra arms-for-hostage scandal rocks the Reagan White House
U.S. warplanes bomb Libyan targets in retaliation for a terrorist bombing in West Berlin
Larry McMurtry receives the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for Lonesome Dove
Henry Taylor receives the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Flying Change
Henry Taylor publishes The Flying Change: Poems
Frank Peretti publishes This Present Darkness
Peter Taylor publishes A Summons to Memphis
Christopher Isherwood dies
Explore: Christopher Isherwood
Juan Rulfo dies
Explore: Juan Rulfo, Because We Are So Poor, Tell Them Not to Kill Me!
Jaroslav Seifert dies
Explore: Jaroslav Seifert
L. Ron Hubbard dies
Frank Herbert dies
Explore: Soul Catcher, Dune, Frank Herbert
Bernard Malamud dies
Explore: Black Is My Favorite Color, Bernard Malamud, Angel Levine
Harriette Simpson Arnow dies
John Ciardi dies
Explore: John Ciardi
Simone de Beauvoir dies
Explore: Belles Images, Les, A Woman Destroyed, Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, What does Simone de Beauvoir claim about the proletarian class and women in The Second Sex?
Jean Genet dies
Explore: The Balcony, Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers
Bessie Head dies
Explore: Snapshots of a Wedding, Life, Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather
William Attaway dies
Explore: William Attaway
Stanley Ellin dies
Fritz Hochwaelder dies
V. C. Andrews dies
John D. Macdonald dies
Explore: The Lonely Silver Rain, One More Sunday, John D. MacDonald