2003 in literature

Events

February 12 – An invitation from First Lady of the United States Laura Bush for a number of poets to attend a conference at the White House on this date is postponed when one of them, Sam Hamill, organizes a "Poets Against the War" group which arranges poetry readings across the United States on this date.

April 14 – The Iraq National Library and Archive is burned down as part of the Battle of Baghdad.

October – Nicholas Hytner succeeds Sir Trevor Nunn as artistic director of the British National Theatre in London.

November 7 – UNESCO designates wayang kulit, a shadow puppet theatre and the best known of the Indonesian wayang, as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

Fiction

Peter Ackroyd – The Clerkenwell Tales

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Purple Hibiscus

Mitch Albom – The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Martin Amis – Yellow Dog

Margaret Atwood – Oryx and Crake

Paul Auster – Oracle Night

Max Barry – Jennifer Government

Greg Bear – Darwin's Children

Hilari Bell – Fall of a Kingdom

Thomas Berger – Best Friends

Giles Blunt – The Delicate Storm

Frank Brennan – Tampering with Asylum

Dan Brown – The Da Vinci Code

Angus Peter Campbell – An Oidhche Mus Do Sheol Sinn

Lars Saabye Christensen – Maskeblomstfamilien

Paulo Coelho – Eleven Minutes

J. M. Coetzee – Elizabeth Costello

Deborah Joy Corey – The Skating Pond

Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Havoc

Sharpe's Christmas

Heretic

Douglas Coupland – Hey Nostradamus!

Robert Crais – The Last Detective

Julie E. Czerneda – Space, Inc.

Jeffery Deaver – Twisted

Don DeLillo – Cosmopolis

Cory Doctorow

A Place So Foreign and Eight More

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Gerard Donovan – Schopenhauer's Telescope

Fernanda Eberstadt – The Furies

Rodrigo Fresán – Jardines de Kensington

Anna Gavalda – I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere (translation)

William Gibson – Pattern Recognition

Jean-Christophe Grangé – L'Empire des loups

John Grisham – The King of Torts

Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Novel

Joanne Harris – Holy Fools

Victor Heck – The Asylum

Vol 2 – The Violent Ward

Vol 3 – The Quiet Ward

Jennifer Haigh – Mrs. Kimble

Zoë Heller – Notes on a Scandal

Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner

Michel Houellebecq – Lanzarote

Alan Judd – The Kaiser's Last Kiss

Thomas Keneally – The Tyrant's Novel

Greg Keyes – The Final Prophecy

Stephen King – Wolves of the Calla

Dean R. Koontz – The Face

Jhumpa Lahiri – The Namesake

Dennis Lehane – Shutter Island

Jonathan Lethem – The Fortress of Solitude

James Luceno – The Unifying Force

Steve Martini – The Arraignment

Magnus Mills – The Scheme for Full Employment

Paul Murray – An Evening of Long Goodbyes

Julie Myerson – Something Might Happen

Andrew Neiderman – The Baby Squad

Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveler's Wife

Garth Nix – Mister Monday

Chuck Palahniuk – Diary

Christopher Paolini – Eragon

Carolyn Parkhurst – The Dogs of Babel

Per Petterson – Out Stealing Horses (Ut og stjæle hester)

DBC Pierre – Vernon God Little

Terry Pratchett

Monstrous Regiment

The Wee Free Men

Jean Raspail – Les Royaumes de Borée

Matthew Reilly – Scarecrow

Nina Revoyr – Southland

J. Jill Robinson – Residual Desire

Nick Sagan – Idlewild

Matthew Sharpe – The Sleeping Father

Michael Slade – Bed of Nails

Wilbur Smith – Blue Horizon

Olen Steinhauer – The Bridge of Sighs

Neal Stephenson – Quicksilver (Vol. I of the Baroque Cycle)

Matthew Stover – Shatterpoint

Anthony Swofford – Jarhead

Miguel Sousa Tavares – Equador

Adam Thirlwell – Politics

Akira Toriyama (鳥山 明) – Toccio the Angel (Tenshi no Tocchio)

Sergio Troncoso – The Nature of Truth

Andrew Vachss – The Getaway Man

Mario Vargas Llosa – The Way to Paradise (El paraíso en la otra esquina)

Jo Walton – Tooth and Claw

Irvine Welsh – Porno

Sean Williams and Shane Dix

Force Heretic: Remnant

Force Heretic: Refugee

Force Heretic: Reunion

Tobias Wolff – Old School

Roger Zelazny – Manna from Heaven (short stories)

Children and young people

Atsuko Asano – No. 6 (あさの あつこ)

Cressida Cowell – How to Train Your Dragon (first in the eponymous series of 16 books)

Elizabeth Laird – The Garbage King

Jim Murphy - An American Plague: the true and terrifying story of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793

Jenny Nimmo - Charlie Bone and the Time Twister

Tyne O'Connell – Pulling Princes

J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Lemony Snicket – The Slippery Slope

Dugald Steer (with Helen Ward, Wayne Anderson, etc.) – Dragonology: The Complete Book of Dragons

Ann Turnbull – No Shame, No Fear

Jacqueline Wilson – Girls in Tears (fourth in the Girls series of four books)

Yang Hongying (楊紅櫻) – Four Troublemakers (四个调皮蛋, first in the Mo's Mischief – 淘气包马小跳 – series of eight books)

Drama

Richard Greenberg – The Violet Hour

David Hare – The Permanent Way

Kwame Kwei-Armah – Elmina's Kitchen

Lynn Nottage – Intimate Apparel

Poetry

Pope John Paul II – Roman Triptych. Meditations

Dean Kalimniou – Kipos Esokleistos

Non–fiction

Banglapedia – National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh

Patricia Brown – A League Of My Own: Memoir of a Pitcher for the All-American Girls

Andrea Curtis – Into the Blue

Gerina Dunwich – Dunwich's Guide to Gemstone Sorcery

Marc Ferro – Le Livre noir du colonialisme

John Fowles – The Journals – Volume 1

Anna Funder – Stasiland

Mattias Gardell – Gods of the Blood

A. C. Grayling – What Is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live

Erik Larson – The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

Don Miller – Blue Like Jazz

Michael Moore – Dude, Where's My Country?

Azar Nafisi – Reading Lolita in Tehran

Alanna Nash – The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley

Chuck Palahniuk – Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon

Jane Smiley – Charles Dickens

Clark Ashton Smith – Selected Letters of Clark Ashton Smith

David Starkey – Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII

Lynne McTaggart – The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe

Amy Tan - The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings

Lynne Truss – Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Deaths

January 5 – Jean Kerr, American author and playwright (born 1923)

January 21 – Paul Haines, American-born Canadian poet and songwriter (born 1933)

February 16 – Aleksandar Tišma, Serbian novelist (born 1924)

February 26 – Quentin Keynes, English explorer, writer and filmmaker (born 1921)

March 11 – Brian Cleeve, English-born Irish writer and broadcaster (born 1921)

March 12 – Howard Fast, American novelist (born 1914)

March 14 – Lucian Boz, Romanian and Australian literary critic (born 1908)

April 3 – Michael Kelly, American journalist (born 1957)

April 7 – Cecile de Brunhoff, French children's writer (born 1903)

June 21

George Axelrod, American dramatist and screenwriter (born 1922)

Leon Uris, American novelist (born 1924)

July 6 – Kathleen Raine, English poet, scholar, and translator (born 1908)

July 10 – Winston Graham, English novelist (born 1908)

July 14 – Éva Janikovszky, Hungarian novelist and children's writer (born 1926)

July 15 – Roberto Bolaño, Chilean-born fiction writer (born 1953)

July 16 – Carol Shields, American-born Canadian novelist (breast cancer, born 1935)

September 3 – Alan Dugan, American poet (born 1923)

November 9 – Alan Davidson, Northern Irish historian and food writer (born 1924)

December 12 – Fadwa Toukan, Palestinian poet (born 1917)

Awards

Nobel Prize for Literature: J. M. Coetzee

Camões Prize: Rubem Fonseca

Australia

The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Nicholas Angel, Drown Them in the Sea

C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Emma Lew, Anything the Landlord Touches

Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Jill Jones, Screens Jets Heaven

Miles Franklin Award: Alex Miller, Journey to the Stone Country

Canada

Giller Prize: M.G. Vassanji – The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

See 2003 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of the winners of those awards.

Griffin Poetry Prize: Margaret Avison, Concrete and Wild Carrot and Paul Muldoon, Moy sand and gravel

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Alison Watt, The Last Island

United Kingdom

Booker Prize: D.B.C. Pierre, Vernon God Little

Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Jennifer Donnelly, A Gathering Light

Cholmondeley Award: Ciarán Carson, Michael Donaghy, Lavinia Greenlaw, Jackie Kay

Eric Gregory Award: Jen Hadfield, Zoe Brigley, Paul Batchelor, Olivia Cole, Sasha Dugdale, Anna Woodford

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: Volume 2 – The Power of Place

James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Andrew O'Hagan, Personality

Orange Prize for Fiction: Valerie Martin, Property

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: U. A. Fanthorpe

Whitbread Book of The Year Award: Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: A Novel

United States

Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: David Shumate, High Water Mark

American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in Poetry: W.S. Merwin

Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: Julie Sheehan, “Brown-headed Cow Birds”

Bollingen Prize for Poetry: Adrienne Rich

Brittingham Prize in Poetry: Brian Teare, The Room Where I Was Born

Compton Crook Award: Patricia Bray, Devlin's Luck

Frost Medal: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Hugo Award: Robert J. Sawyer, Hominids

Lambda Literary Awards: Multiple categories; see 2003 Lambda Literary Awards.

National Book Award for Fiction: to The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard

National Book Critics Circle Award: to The Known World by Edward P. Jones

Newbery Medal for children's literature: Avi, Crispin: The Cross of Lead

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: to The Caprices by Sabina Murray

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

Wallace Stevens Award: Richard Wilbur

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Courtney Angela Brkic (fiction/nonfiction), Alexander Chee, Agymah Kamau, Ann Pancake, Lewis Robinson, Jess RowNonfiction: Christopher Cokinos, Trudy DittmarPlays: Sarah RuhlPoetry: Major Jackson

Elsewhere

International Dublin Literary Award: Orhan Pamuk My Name is Red

Premio Nadal: Andrés Trapiello, Los amigos del crimen perfecto