1997 in literature

Events

February 20 – Allen Ginsberg makes a final public appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam. He continues to write through his final illness, his last poem being "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)" written on March 30.

May – Shakespeare's Globe in London, a reconstruction of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre, opens with a production of Shakespeare's Henry V.

June 30 – J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is published in London.

October – Jacket online literary magazine founded

November 24 – New British Library building in London designed by Colin St John Wilson opens to readers.

December 30 – The memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is removed from the ninth-grade English curriculum in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, for portraying "white people as being horrible, nasty, stupid people".

Tom Clancy signs a deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. giving him US $50 million for the world English rights to two new books. A second agreement pays another $25 million for a four-year book/multimedia deal, and a third, with Berkley Books for 24 paperbacks to tie in with an ABC television miniseries for $22 million.

Fiction

Ben Aaronovitch & Kate Orman – So Vile a Sin

Mitch Albom – Tuesdays With Morrie

Martin Amis – Night Train

Iain Banks – A Song of Stone

John Banville – The Untouchable

Hazel Barnes – The Story I Tell Myself

Marie Bashkirtseff (died 1884) – I Am the Most Interesting Book of All (translation)

Raymond Benson – Tomorrow Never Dies and Zero Minus Ten

Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman – Vampire Science

Roberto Bolaño – Last Evenings on Earth (Llamadas Telefonicas)

Pascal Bruckner – Les Voleurs de beauté

Simon Bucher-Jones – Ghost Devices

Christopher Bulis – A Device of Death

Tim Burton – The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories

Candace Bushnell – Sex and the City

Peter Carey – Jack Maggs

Caleb Carr – The Angel of Darkness

Agatha Christie

The Harlequin Tea Set

While the Light Lasts and Other Stories

Mary Higgins Clark – Pretend You Don't See Her

Warwick Collins – Gents

Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Tiger

Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur

Patricia Cornwell

Hornet's Nest

Unnatural Exposure

Paul Cornell – Oh No It Isn't!

Jim Crace – Quarantine

Robert Crais – Indigo Slam

Ann C. Crispin

The Hutt Gambit

The Paradise Snare

Don DeLillo – Underworld

Anita Diamant – The Red Tent

Terrance Dicks

The Eight Doctors

Mean Streets

Fernanda Eberstadt – When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth

Charles Frazier – Cold Mountain

Anthony Frewin – London Blues

Anastasia Gosteva – Дочь самурая (The Samurai's Daughter)

John Grisham – The Partner

Barbara Hambly – Planet of Twilight

Allison Hedge Coke – Dog Road Woman

Matt Jones – Beyond the Sun

Sebastian Junger – The Perfect Storm

Winona LaDuke – Last Standing Woman

Joe R. Lansdale – Bad Chili

Paul Leonard – Genocide

Ann-Marie MacDonald – Fall on Your Knees

Bernard MacLaverty – Grace Notes

Ian R. MacLeod – Voyages by Starlight

Norman Mailer – The Gospel According to the Son

Ian McEwan – Enduring Love

David A. McIntee – The Dark Path

Lawrence Miles

Alien Bodies

Down

Mark Morris – The Bodysnatchers

Toni Morrison – Paradise

Jim Mortimore – Eternity Weeps

Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) – In the Miso Soup (イン ザ・ミソスープ, English translation 2005)

Courttia Newland – The Scholar

Kate Orman – The Room with No Doors

Lance Parkin – The Dying Days

James Patterson – Cat and Mouse

Cyril Pearl – Morisson of Peking

John Peel – War of the Daleks

Pepetela – A Gloriosa Família

Marc Platt – Lungbarrow

Terry Pratchett – Jingo

Annie Proulx – "Brokeback Mountain" (short story)

Thomas Pynchon – Mason & Dixon

Kathy Reichs – Déjà Dead

Nina Revoyr – The Necessary Hunger

Justin Richards – Dragons' Wrath

Mordecai Richler – Barney's Version

Gareth Roberts – The Well-Mannered War

Philip Roth – American Pastoral

Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things

Don Miguel Ruiz – The Four Agreements

Gary Russell

Deadfall

Instruments of Darkness

Will Self – Great Apes

Carol Shields – Larry's Party

Sidney Sheldon – The Best Laid Plans

Michael Stackpole – The Bacta War

Danielle Steel

The Ghost

The Ranch

Special Delivery

Dave Stone

Burning Heart

Ship of Fools

William Sutcliffe – Are You Experienced?

Antonio Tabucchi – The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro (La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro)

Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now

Kurt Vonnegut – Timequake

Lulu Wang – Het Lelietheater (The Lily Theatre)

Timothy Zahn – Specter of the Past

Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold – Donnerjack

Children and young people

Lynne Reid Banks – Harry the Poisonous Centipede: A Story to Make You Squirm (first in the "Harry the Poisonous Centipede trilogy)

'Asta Bowen – Wolf: A Journey Home

Cao Wenxuan (曹文軒) – The Grass House (草房子)

Sarah Ferguson – Budgie the Little Helicopter (first in an eponymous series of five books)

Virginia Hamilton (with Barry Moser) - A Ring of Tricksters: Animal Tales from America, the West Indies, and Africa

Mark Helprin (with Chris Van Allsburg) - The Veil of Snows

William Mayne – Lady Muck (illustrated by Jonathan Heale)

Eloise Jarvis McGraw – The Moorchild

Junko Morimoto – The Two Bullies

Barbara Nichol (with Barry Moser) - Dippers

Philip Pullman – The Subtle Knife

Rick Riordan – Big Red Tequila

J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Ron Roy – The Absent Author (first in the A to Z Mysteries series of 26 books)

Vivian Walsh – Olive, the Other Reindeer

Jacqueline Wilson – Girls in Love

Drama

Jon Fosse – Nightsongs

Lee Hall – Spoonface Steinberg (radio monologue)

Moisés Kaufman – Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde

Thomas Kilroy – The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde

Conor McPherson – The Weir

Patrick Marber – Closer

Richard Nelson – Goodnight Children Everywhere

Peter Whelan – The Herbal Bed

Poetry

Ted Hughes – Tales from Ovid

Non-fiction

Karen Armstrong – Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet

Dave Barry – Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs

Jean-Dominique Bauby – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le papillon)

Cari Beauchamp – Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood

Bill Bryson – A Walk in the Woods

Iris Chang – The Rape of Nanking

Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs and Steel

Jenny Diski – Skating to Antarctica

Alan Downs – Beyond the Looking Glass: Overcoming the Seductive Culture of Corporate Narcissism

Michael Drosnin – The Bible Code

Gerina Dunwich – A Wiccan's Guide to Prophecy and Divination

Benjamin Fondane – Le voyageur n'a pas fini de voyager (posth.)

Timothy Ferris – The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report

Stephen Fry – Moab Is My Washpot (autobiography)

Charlotte Gray – Mrs. King

Alan Guth – The Inflationary Universe

Jesse Lee Kercheval – Building Fiction

James McBride – The Color of Water

Adele Morales – The Last Party: Scenes From My Life with Norman Mailer

Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont – Fashionable Nonsense

Maria Todorova – Imagining the Balkans

Kevin Warwick – March of the Machines

Deaths

January 19 – James Dickey, American poet and novelist (born 1923)

February 3 – Bohumil Hrabal, Czech novelist (born 1914)

February 18 – Emily Hahn, American journalist and author (born 1905)

April 5 – Allen Ginsberg, American poet (liver cancer, born 1926)

May 9 – Rina Lasnier, Canadian poet (born 1915)

June 8 – George Turner, Australian novelist and critic (born 1916)

July 26 – Joseph Henry Reason, American librarian (born 1905)

August 2 – William S. Burroughs, American novelist (born 1914

August 16 – Gerard McLarnon, Irish actor and playwright (born 1915)

August 27 – Johannes Edfelt, Swedish poet, translator and critic (born 1904)

October 14 – Harold Robbins, American novelist (born 1916)

October 16 – James A. Michener, American novelist and historian (born 1907)

November 6 – Leon Forrest, African American novelist and essayist (cancer, born 1937)

November 30 – Kathy Acker, American novelist and poet (breast cancer, born 1947)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: Dario Fo

Europe Theatre Prize: Robert Wilson

Camões Prize: Pepetela

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Eva Sallis, Hiam

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Les Murray, Subhuman Redneck Poems

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Anthony Lawrence, The Viewfinder

Mary Gilmore Prize: Morgan Yasbincek, Night Reversing

Miles Franklin Award: David Foster, The Glade Within the Grove

Canada

Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award: Rachel Rose

Giller Prize for Canadian Fiction: Mordecai Richler, Barney's Version

See 1997 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Anne Mullens, Timely Death

France

Prix Goncourt: Patrick Rambaud, La Bataille

Prix Décembre: Lydie Salvayre, La Compagnie des spectres

Prix Médicis International: T. Coraghessan Boyle, America

Prix Médicis French: Les Sept Noms du peintre – Philippe Le Guillou

Spain

Premio Miguel de Cervantes: Guillermo Cabrera Infante

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Tim Bowler, River Boy

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: R. F. Foster, William Butler Yeats: A Life, Volume 1 – The Apprentice Mage 1965-1914

Cholmondeley Award: Alison Brackenbury, Gillian Clarke, Tony Curtis, Anne Stevenson

Eric Gregory Award: Matthew Clegg, Sarah Corbett, Polly Clark, Tim Kendall, Graham Nelson, Matthew Welton

Orange Prize for Fiction: Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

Whitbread Best Book Award: Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Richard Blanco, City of a Hundred Fires

Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Fred Chappell

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry, John Ashbery

Compton Crook Award: Richard Garfinkle, Celestial Matters

Hugo Award: Kim Stanley Robinson, Blue Mars

Nebula Award: Vonda McIntyre, The Moon and the Sun

Newbery Medal for children's literature: E. L. Konigsburg, The View from Saturday

Pulitzer Prize for Drama: no award given

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Steven Millhauser – Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Lisel Mueller: Alive Together: New and Selected Poems

Wallace Stevens Award: Anthony Hecht

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Josip Novakovich (fiction/nonfiction), Melanie Rae ThonNonfiction: Jo Ann Beard, Suketu Mehta (fiction/nonfiction), Ellen MeloyPlays: Erik EhnPoetry: Connie Deanovich, Forrest Gander, Jody Gladding, Mark Turpin

Elsewhere

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award: Javier Marias, A Heart So White

Premio Nadal: Carlos Cañeque, Quién