1995 in literature

Events

January 12 – Première of the completed version of Sarah Kane's Blasted at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London provokes outrage.

February 28 – The Diary of Bridget Jones column first published in The Independent newspaper (London).

March 1 – The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea is opened by Jimmy Carter.

April 23 – World Book Day first celebrated.

July 16 – Amazon.com, incorporated a year earlier by Jeff Bezos in Washington (state) as an online bookstore, sells its first book: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.

December 13 – Release of the film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility with an Academy Award-winning screenplay by Emma Thompson.

Simon & Schuster pay US $4.2 million for the hardcover publishing rights to The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans after the self-published book appears on The New York Times Best Seller list.

Fjærland in Norway becomes a book town.

Fiction

Ben Aaronovitch – The Also People

Louisa May Alcott (posthumous) – A Long Fatal Love Chase

Roger MacBride Allen

Ambush at Corellia

Assault at Selonia

Showdown at Centerpoint

Julia Alvarez – In the Time of the Butterflies

Martin Amis – The Information

Kevin J. Anderson – Darksaber

Iain Banks – Whit

Pat Barker – The Ghost Road

Daniel Blythe – Infinite Requiem

Christopher Bulis – The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Edgar Rice Burroughs and Joe R. Lansdale – Tarzan: the Lost Adventure

T. C. Boyle – The Tortilla Curtain

Albert Camus (posthumous) – The First Man (Le Premier Homme, unfinished)

Andrew Cartmel – Warlock

Mary Higgins Clark – Silent Night

Michael Connelly – The Last Coyote

Paul Cornell – Human Nature

Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Battle

Battle Flag

The Winter King

Douglas Coupland – Microserfs

Robert Crais – Voodoo River

Michael Crichton – The Lost World

Maurice G. Dantec – Les Racines du mal

Martin Day – The Menagerie

L. Sprague de Camp and Christopher Stasheff – The Exotic Enchanter

Samuel Delany – Hogg

Terrance Dicks – Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans

Umberto Eco – The Island of the Day Before

Nicholas Evans – The Horse Whisperer

Timothy Findley – The Piano Man's Daughter

Richard Ford – Independence Day

Jon Fosse – Melancholy (Melancholia I)

Carlos Fuentes – The Crystal Frontier (La frontera de cristal)

John Gardner – GoldenEye

John Grisham – The Rainmaker

Barbara Hambly – Children of the Jedi

Craig Hinton – Millennial Rites

Nick Hornby – High Fidelity

Kazuo Ishiguro – The Unconsoled

Elfriede Jelinek – The Children of the Dead

Jo Jung-rae – Arirang

Welwyn Wilton Katz – Out of the Dark

Stephen King – Rose Madder

Joe R. Lansdale – The Two-Bear Mambo

John le Carré – Our Game

Andy Lane

The Empire of Glass

Original Sin

Paul Leonard

Dancing the Code

Toy Soldiers

Jonathan Lethem – Amnesia Moon

Barry Letts – The Ghosts of N-Space

Robert Ludlum – The Apocalypse Watch

Steve Lyons

Head Games

Time of Your Life

Frank McCourt – Angela's Ashes (semi-autobiographical)

Val McDermid – The Mermaids Singing

David A. McIntee

Lords of the Storm

Sanctuary

Henning Mankell – Chronicler of the Winds (Comédia infantil)

Stephen Marley – Managra

Zakes Mda – Ways of Dying

James A. Michener – Miracle in Seville

Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance

Mary McGarry Morris – Songs in Ordinary Time

Phil O'Brien – Memories of the Irish-Israeli War

Kate Orman – Set Piece

Leslie and Les Parrott – Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

Terry Pratchett – Maskerade

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child – Relic (novel) and Mount Dragon

Jean Raspail – L'Anneau du pêcheur

Justin Richards – System Shock

Andrew Roberts – The Aachen Memorandum

Gareth Roberts

The Romance of Crime

Zamper

J. Jill Robinson – Eggplant Wife

Philip Roth – Sabbath's Theater

Salman Rushdie – The Moor's Last Sigh

Gary Russell – Invasion of the Cat-People

Josè Saramago – Blindness (Ensaio sobre a cegueira)

W. G. Sebald – Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine englische Wallfahrt (The Rings of Saturn: An English Pilgrimage)

Sidney Sheldon – Morning, Noon, & Night

Danielle Steel – Five Days In Paris

Neal Stephenson – The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

James B. Stewart – Blood Sport

Dave Stone – Sky Pirates!

Jim Turner, editor – Cthulhu 2000: A Lovecraftian Anthology

Andrew Vachss – Footsteps of the Hawk

Robert James Waller – Puerto Vallarta Squeeze

Dave Wolverton – The Courtship of Princess Leia

Children and young people

Chris Van Allsburg - Bad Day at Riverbend

Elizabeth Arnold – The Parsley Parcel

Virginia Hamilton (with Leo and Diane Dillon) - Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales

Joe R. Lansdale – Tarzan: the Lost Adventure

Jim Murphy - The Great Fire

Alison Prince – The Sherwood Hero

Philip Pullman – Northern Lights (in US as The Golden Compass)

Diana Pullein-Thompson – I Wanted a Pony

Josephine Pullein-Thompson – Six Ponies

Jacqueline Wilson – Double Act

Mario Vargas Llosa (with Willi Glasauer) – Hitos y Mitos Literarios (The Milestones and the Stories of Greatest Literary Works)

Drama

Jez Butterworth – Mojo

Margaret Edson – Wit

Horton Foote – The Young Man From Atlanta

Jon Fosse – The Name

Sarah Kane – Blasted

Terrence McNally – Master Class

Yasmina Reza – The Unexpected Man

Tom Stoppard – Indian Ink

Poetry

Mark Doty – Atlantis: Poems

Non-fiction

Jean Baudrillard – The Gulf War Did Not Take Place

John G. Bennett (posthumously) – The Masters of Wisdom

George G. Blackburn – The Guns of Normandy

Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams – The Craft of Research

Pascal Bruckner – The Temptation of Innocence

L. Sprague de Camp – The Ape-Man Within

Paul Davies – About Time

Robin Dunbar – The Trouble with Science

Mark Epstein – Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective

Bill Gates – The Road Ahead

Doris Kearns Goodwin – No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

Nelson Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom

Leonard Nimoy – I Am Spock

Man Ray and André Breton – Man Ray, 1890–1976

Condoleezza Rice and Philip Zelikow – Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft

Oliver Sacks – An Anthropologist on Mars

Simon Schama – Landscape and Memory

Sterling Seagrave – Lords of the Rim

Miranda Seymour – Robert Graves: Life on the Edge

Howard Stern – Miss America

Tim Cornell – The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars

Binod Bihari Verma – Tapasa vai Ganga Maithili, biography

Ibn Warraq – Why I Am Not a Muslim

Deaths

January 9 – Peter Cook, English writer, comedian and satirist (born 1937)

January 30 – Gerald Durrell, English nature writer and naturalist (born 1925)

January 31 – George Abbott, American writer, director and producer (born 1887)

February 4 – Patricia Highsmith, American crime novelist (born 1921)

February 6 – Xia Yan (夏衍), Chinese playwright and screenwriter, (born 1900)

February 21

Robert Bolt, English dramatist (born 1924)

Calder Willingham, American writer (born 1922)

February 23 – James Herriot, English veterinary novelist (born 1916)

April 14 – Brian Coffey, Irish poet (born 1905)

May 30 or May 31 – Ștefana Velisar Teodoreanu, Romanian novelist, memoirist and poet (born 1897)

June 14 – Roger Zelazny, American fantasy and science fiction writer (born 1937)

June 25 – Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津), Taiwanese Chinese novelist (suicide, born 1969)

July 16

May Sarton, Belgian-born American poet, novelist and memoirist (born 1912)

Stephen Spender, English poet (born 1909)

August 3 – Edward Whittemore, American novelist, (born 1933)

August 19 – Pierre Schaeffer, French composer and writer (born 1910)

August 29 – Michael Ende, German fantasy novelist (born 1929)

October 13 – Henry Roth, Austrian-born American novelist and short story writer (born 1906)

October 22 – Kingsley Amis, English novelist (born 1922)

November 10 – Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian writer (executed, born 1941)

November 13 – Mary Elizabeth Counselman, American author and poet (born 1911)

November 16 – Robert H. Adleman, American novelist and historian (born 1919)

November 17 – Marguerite Young, American novelist, poet and biographer (born 1908)

November 22 – Margaret St. Clair, American science fiction writer (born 1911)

December 2 – Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist (born 1913)

December 9 – Toni Cade Bambara, American writer (born 1939)

December 30 – Heiner Müller, German dramatist (born 1929)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Seamus Heaney

Camões Prize: José Saramago

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Richard King, Kindling Does For Firewood

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Bruce Beaver, Anima and Other Poems

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Peter Boyle, Coming Home From the World

Mary Gilmore Prize: Aileen Kelly, Coming Up for Light

Miles Franklin Award: Helen Demidenko, The Hand That Signed the Paper

Canada

Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award

Giller Prize for Canadian Fiction: Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

See 1995 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Denise Chong, The Concubine's Children

France

Prix Goncourt: Andreï Makine, Le Testament français

Prix Décembre: Jean Échenoz, Les Grandes Blondes

Prix Médicis French: Vassilis Alexakis, La Langue maternelle and Andreï Makine, Le testament français

Prix Médicis International: Alessandro Baricco, Châteaux de la colère

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Philip Pullman, Northern Lights

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Christopher Priest, The Prestige

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth

Cholmondeley Award: U.A. Fanthorpe, Christopher Reid, C. H. Sisson, Kit Wright

Eric Gregory Award: Colette Bryce, Sophie Hannah, Tobias Hill, Mark Wormald

Newdigate prize: Antony Dunn

Whitbread Book of the Year Award: Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Sandy Solomon, Pears, Lake, Sun

Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Maxine Kumin

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction, William Maxwell

Carnegie Medal: Philip Pullman, Northern Lights

Compton Crook Award: Doranna Durgin, Dun Lady's Jess

Hugo Award: Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance

Nebula Award: Robert Sawyer, The Terminal Experiment

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Horton Foote, The Young Man From Atlanta

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Philip Levine, The Simple Truth

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life

Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction: Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time

Pulitzer Prize for History: Doris Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

Wallace Stevens Award: James Tate

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Michael Cunningham, Reginald McKnight, Matthew Stadler, Melanie SumnerNonfiction: André Aciman, Lucy Grealy (nonfiction/poetry), Suzannah Lessard, Russ RymerPoetry: James L. McMichael, Mary Ruefle

Elsewhere

New Zealand Book Award for Poetry: Michele Leggott, Dia

Montana Book Award for Poetry: Michael Jackson, Pieces of Music

Premio Nadal: Ignacio Carrión Hernández, Cruzar el Danubio