2012 in literature

Events

January 1 – Copyright restrictions on James Joyce's major works are lifted on the first day of the year.

January 20 – British novelist Salman Rushdie cancels an appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India, and four other writers leave the city after reading excerpts from The Satanic Verses, which is banned in the country.

February – James Joyce's children's story The Cats of Copenhagen is published for the first time by Ithys Press in Dublin.

March – The discovery is announced of a collection of fairy tales gathered by historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth and locked away in a Regensburg archive for more than 150 years.

April – While attending the London Book Fair, exiled Chinese writer Ma Jian uses red paint to smear a cross over his face and a copy of his banned book Beijing Coma and calls Chinese publishers a "mouthpiece of the Chinese communist party" after being "manhandled" while attempting to present the book to Liu Binjie at the fair.

July – Jaime García Márquez tells his students that his brother Gabriel García Márquez, the Colombian writer and recipient of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature, suffers from dementia that has ended his writing career.

September 27 – 50th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

September 28 – Sue Limb's parody of the Bloomsbury Group, Gloomsbury, begins broadcasting on BBC Radio 4 in the U.K.

October 24 – Boekenberg ("Book mountain") public library in Spijkenisse, Netherlands, designed by MVRDV, is opened.

December – The discovery is announced of "The Tallow Candle", a previously unknown story by Hans Christian Andersen. It was found at the bottom of a box in Denmark in October.

Children and young people

David Almond - The Boy Who Swam With Piranhas

Aaron Frisch (with Roberto Innocenti) - The Girl in Red

John Green – The Fault in Our Stars

Jon Klassen – This is Not My Hat

Rick Riordan – The Mark of Athena

Maggie Stiefvater - The Raven Boys (first book in The Raven Cycle)

Jacqueline Wilson – The Worst Thing About My Sister

Drama

Ayad Akhtar – Disgraced

Alan Bennett

Cocktail Sticks

Hymn

People

Monica Byrne – What Every Girl Should Know

Lolita Chakrabarti – Red Velvet

James Graham – This House

Miho Mosulishvili – My Redbreast

Suman Mukhopadhyay – Bisarjan

Theresa Rebeck – Dead Accounts

Anne Washburn – Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play

Poetry

See 2012 in poetry

Paige Ackerson-Kiely – My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer

Marilyn Buck – Inside/Out: Selected Poems

Mehr Lal Soni Zia Fatehabadi – The Qat'aat o Rubaiyat of Zia Fatehabadi (quatrains, translation)

Jack Gilbert – Collected Poems

Paul Hoover – Desolation: Souvenir

Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波) – June Fourth Elegies (translation)

Eileen Myles – Snow-Flake

Lucia Perillo – On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths

D. A. Powell – Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys

W. G. Sebald – Across the Land and the Water: Selected Poems 1964–2001

David Wagoner – After the Point of No Return

Lew Welch – Ring of Bone: Collected Poems

Science fiction and fantasy

Karl Schroeder – Ashes of Candesce (February 14)

John Barrowman and Carole Barrowman – Hollow Earth

Tobias Buckell – Arctic Rising (February 28)

Tim Powers – Hide Me Among the Graves (March 13)

Jon Courtenay Grimwood – The Outcast Blade (March 26)

Robert J. Sawyer – Triggers (April 3)

John Birmingham – Angels of Vengeance (April 10)

Brian Evenson – Immobility (April 10)

Brian Francis Slattery – Lost Everything (April 10)

Mary Robinette Kowal – Glamour in Glass (April 10)

Samuel R. Delany – Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders (April 17)

Stephen King – The Wind Through the Keyhole (April 24)

N. K. Jemisin – The Killing Moon (May 1)

China Miéville – Railsea (May 15)

Daniel Abraham – The King's Blood (May 22)

Ian C. Esslemont – Orb, Sceptre, Throne (May 22)

Mira Grant – Blackout (May 22)

Kim Stanley Robinson – 2312 (May 22)

Douglas Hulick – Sworn in Steel (June 5)

Paul Melko – Broken Universe (June 5)

Alastair Reynolds – Blue Remembered Earth (June 5)

John Scalzi – Redshirts (June 5)

Daniel H. Wilson – Amped (June 5)

N. K. Jemisin – The Shadowed Sun (June 12)

David Brin – Existence (June 19)

Terry Pratchett & Stephen Baxter – The Long Earth (June 19)

Daniel Abraham (writing as James S.A. Corey) – Caliban's War (June 26)

Alex Bledsoe – Wake of the Bloody Angel (July 3)

Charles Stross – The Apocalypse Codex (July 3)

Rick Riordan – The Mark of Athena (October 2)

Aaron Allston – Mercy Kill

Hannu Rajaniemi – The Fractal Prince (September 4)

Brent Weeks – The Blinding Knife (September 11)

Steven Erikson – Forge of Darkness (September 18)

Joe Abercrombie – Red Country (November 20)

Jay Lake – Calamity of So Long a Life

Michael Moorcock – The Whispering Swarm

Gene Wolfe – The Land Across

Troy Denning – Fate of the Jedi: Apocalypse

Deaths

January 3 – Josef Škvorecký, Czech-born novelist and publisher (born 1924)

January 19 – On Sarig, Israeli children's author (born 1926)

January 23 – Maurice Meisner, American historian, author, and academic (born 1931)

January 28 – Don Starkell, Canadian diarist and author (born 1932)

January 29 – Damien Bona, American historian and journalist (born 1955)

January 30 – Bill Wallace, American children's author and educator (born 1947)

February 1 – Wisława Szymborska, Polish poet and Nobel laureate (born 1923)

February 3 – John Christopher (Samuel Youd) English science fiction novelist (born 1922)

February 4 – Irene McKinney, American poet (born 1939)

February 4 – John Turner Sargent, Sr., American publisher (born 1924)

March 21 – Christine Brooke-Rose, Swiss-born English novelist and translator (born 1923)

March 25 – Antonio Tabucchi, Italian writer (born 1943)

March 27 – Adrienne Rich, American writer (born 1929)

March 28 – John Arden, English playwright (born 1930)

April 2 – Sarah Dreher, American novelist and playwright (born 1937)

April 7 – Miss Read (Dora Jesse Shafe), English novelist (born 1913)

April 8 – Janusz K. Zawodny, Polish-American and political scientist (born 1921)

April 17 – Leila Berg, English children's writer and activist (born 1917)

April 26 – Ardian Klosi, Albanian publicist and writer (suicide, born 1957)

May 8 – Maurice Sendak, American children's author and illustrator (born 1928)

May 12 – Walter Wink, American theologian and scholar (born 1935)

May 15

Jean Craighead George, American novelist (born 1919)

Carlos Fuentes, Mexican novelist and essayist (born 1928)

May 26 – Leo Dillon, American children's author and illustrator (born 1933)

June 5

Ray Bradbury, American science-fiction and fantasy author (born 1920)

Barry Unsworth, English writer of historical fiction (born 1930)

July 28 – Carol Kendall, American children's writer (born 1917)

July 30

Maeve Binchy, Irish novelist, playwright and short story writer (born 1939)

Héctor Tizón, Argentinian writer and diplomat (born 1929)

July 31

Mollie Hunter, Scottish novelist and children's writer (born 1922)

Gore Vidal, American novelist, playwright and political commentator (born 1925)

August 2

Amos Hakham, Israeli biblical scholar (born 1921)

Sir John Keegan, English military historian and journalist (born 1934)

Gilbert Prouteau, French poet and film director (born 1917)

August 4 – Henry Scholberg, American bibliographer (born 1921)

August 11 – Heidi Holland, South African journalist and author (born 1947)

August 22 – Nina Bawden, English novelist and children's writer (born 1925)

September 6 – Horacio Vázquez-Rial, Argentine-born Spanish writer (cancer, born 1947)

September 8 – Jon Tolaas, Norwegian poet and novelist (born 1939)

September 10

Ernesto de la Peña, Mexican writer (born 1927)

Hans Joachim Störig, German writer, lexicographer and translator (born 1915)

September 12 – Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Russian poet (born 1946)

September 14 – Louis Simpson, American poet (Alzheimer's disease, born 1923)

September 15 – Fred Bodsworth, Canadian writer (born 1918)

September 20

Robert G. Barrett, Australian author (cancer, born 1942)

Tereska Torrès, French writer (born 1920)

September 22 – Irving Adler, American author, mathematician, and scientist (born 1913)

7 October – Ivo Michiels (Henri Paul René Ceuppens), Belgian writer in Flemish (born 1923)

October 25 – Aude, Canadian novelist (born 1947)

29 October – J. Bernlef, Dutch writer (born 1937)

2 November – János Rózsás, Hungarian writer (born 1926)

19 November – Boris Strugatsky, Soviet Russian writer (pneumonia, born 1925)

20 November – Ivan Kušan, Croatian writer (born 1933)

22 November – Jan Trefulka, Czech writer and dissident (renal failure, born 1929)

6 December – Jan Carew, Guyanese novelist and playwright (born 1920)

28 December – Jayne Cortez, African-American poet (born 1934)

31 December – Jovette Marchessault, Canadian novelist and playwright (born 1938)

Awards

Camões Prize: Dalton Trevisan

Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award: Gene Wolfe

Dayne Ogilvie Prize: Main award, Amber Dawn; honour of distinction, Mariko Tamaki.

Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Joshua Knelman, Hot Art

Governor General's Awards: Multiple categories; see 2012 Governor General's Awards.

Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction: Candace Savage, A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award: Jon McGregor, Even the Dogs

Lambda Literary Awards: Multiple categories; see 2012 Lambda Literary Awards.

Man Booker Prize: Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

Miles Franklin Award: Anna Funder, All That I Am.

National Book Award for Fiction: to The Round House by Louise Erdrich

National Book Critics Circle Award: to Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

Nobel Prize in Literature: Mo Yan

Orange Prize for Fiction: to The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: to The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: John Agard

Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize: Tamas Dobozy, Siege 13

Scotiabank Giller Prize: Will Ferguson, 419

Whiting Awards:

Fiction: Alan Heathcock, Anthony Marra, Hanna PylväinenNonfiction: Sharifa Rhodes-PittsPlays: Danai Gurira, Samuel D. Hunter, Mona Mansour, Meg MiroshnikPoetry: Ciaran Berry, Atsuro Riley

Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award: Nino Ricci

14 May – Martin Thomas wins the National Biography Award for his biography The Many Worlds of R. H. Mathews: In Search of an Australian Anthropologist which tells the story of a surveyor and self-taught anthropologist who became one of Australia's most significant early researchers of Aboriginal languages, culture and history.