1996 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1996.

Events

• July 8 – Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and 30 other books are struck from an English reading list in Lindale, Texas, as they "conflict with the values of the community."<ref>Herbert N. Foerstel, Banned in the USA, Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 233.</ref>
• July 11 – As requested by Nelson Mandela, Benjamin Zephaniah hosts the President's Two Nations Concert at London's Royal Albert Hall.<ref>Life at the Hall – Happy Birthday, Nelson Mandela Template:Webarchive. Accessed 9 December 2014.</ref>
• October 3 – The first performance is held in New York of Eve Ensler's episodic feminist play The Vagina Monologues.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• unknown dates
  • In the UK, the first Orange Prize for Fiction for female novelists goes to Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• • Peter O'Donnell publishes Cobra Trap, a final volume featuring Modesty Blaise. The first appeared in 1965.
  • Margaret Mitchell's lost first novella, Lost Laysen, is published, 80 years after it was written.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Romance Writings, including her novel Princess Docile, are first published 234 years after her death.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

New books

Fiction

• Anonymous (Joe Klein) – Primary Colors: a novel of politics
• Jeffrey Archer – The Fourth Estate
• Margaret Atwood – Alias Grace<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Beryl Bainbridge – Every Man for Himself<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• David Baldacci – Absolute Power<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• Iain M. Banks – Excession<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
• David Bergen – A Year of Lesser<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• Dionne Brand – In Another Place, Not Here
• Larry Brown – Father and Son
• Candace Bushnell – Sex and the City
• Brett Butler – Knee Deep in Paradise
• Tom Clancy – Executive Orders
• Joseph Connolly – This Is It
• Bernard Cornwell – The Bloody Ground and Enemy of God
• Douglas Coupland – Polaroids from the Dead<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• Amanda Craig – A Vicious Circle
• Robert Crais – Sunset Express
• John Darnton – Neanderthal<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Donald Davidson – The Big Ballad Jamboree<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• Seamus Deane – Reading in the Dark
• Joan Didion – The Last Thing He Wanted
• Stephen R. Donaldson – The Gap into Ruin: This Day All Gods Die
• Ben Elton – Popcorn
• Steve Erickson – Amnesiascope
• Helen Fielding – Bridget Jones's Diary
• Jon Fosse – Melancholy II (Melancholia II)
• Neil Gaiman
  • The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (graphic novel; ninth in The Sandman series)
  • The Sandman: The Wake (graphic novel; tenth in The Sandman series)
• John Gardner – Cold
• Richard Garfinkle – Celestial Matters
• Alex Garland – The Beach
• William Golding – The Double Tongue
• John Grisham – The Runaway Jury and Hackers (short stories)
• James L. Halperin – The Truth Machine
• Colin Harrison – Manhattan Nocturne
• Elisabeth Harvor – Let Me Be the One (short stories)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Nancy Huston – The Goldberg Variations
• Tama Janowitz – By the Shores of Gitchee Gumee
• Matt Jones – Bad Therapy
• Stephen King
  • Desperation
  • The Green Mile
  • The Regulators
• Dean R. Koontz – Intensity
• Michael P. Kube-McDowell – Before the Storm
  • Shield of Lies
  • Tyrant's Test
• Caroline Lamarche – Le Jour du chien (The Day of the Dog)
• Hugh Laurie – The Gun Seller
• John le Carré – The Tailor of Panama
• Paul Leonard – Speed of Flight
• Steve Lyons – Killing Ground
• George R. R. Martin – A Game of Thrones
• David A. McIntee – The Shadow of Weng-Chiang
• Terry McMillan – How Stella Got Her Groove Back
• Javier Marías – When I Was Mortal (Cuando fui mortal, short stories)
• Vladimir Megre – Anastasiya
• Lawrence Miles – Christmas on a Rational Planet
• Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance
• Shani Mootoo – Cereus Blooms at Night
• Joyce Carol Oates – We Were the Mulvaneys
• Daniel O'Mahony – The Man in the Velvet Mask
• Kate Orman – Return of the Living Dad and Sleepy
• Chuck Palahniuk – Fight Club
• Lance Parkin – Cold Fusion and Just War
• Marc Platt – Downtime
• Terry Pratchett – Feet of Clay and Hogfather
• Qiu Miaojin (posthumous) – Last Words from Montmartre
• James Redfield – The Tenth Insight
• Justin Richards – The Sands of Time
• Gareth Roberts
  • The English Way of Death
  • The Plotters
• Mary Rosenblum – Synthesis & Other Virtual Realities
• Kristine Kathryn Rusch – The New Rebellion
• Gary Russell – The Scales of Injustice
• Jeff Shaara – Gods and Generals
• Michael Stackpole
  • The Krytos Trap
  • Rogue Squadron
  • Wedge's Gamble
• Dave Stone – Death and Diplomacy
• Graham Swift – Last Orders
• Guy Vanderhaeghe – The Englishman's Boy
• David Foster Wallace – Infinite Jest
• Daniel Woodrell – Give Us a Kiss
• Monika Maron – Animal Triste

Children and young people

• K.A. Applegate – Animorphs series
• Marion Zimmer Bradley (with Rosemary Edghill) – Witchlight
• Eve Bunting (with Ned Bittinger) – The Blue and the Gray
• James C. Christensen (with Renwick St. James and Alan Dean Foster) – Voyage of the Basset
• Anne Fine – The Tulip Touch
• Elaine Forrestal – Someone Like Me
• Mem Fox – Boo to a Goose
• Mark Helprin (with Chris Van Allsburg) – A City in Winter
• E. T. A. Hoffmann (with Roberto Innocenti) – The Nutcracker
• Lyll Becerra de Jenkins – So Loud a Silence
• Julius Lester – Sam and the Tigers: A New Telling of Little Black Sambo
• Anne McCaffrey – No One Noticed the Cat
• Michael Morpurgo – The Butterfly Lion
• Jim Murphy – A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy
• Andre Norton (with Martin H. Greenberg and Mark Hess) – Catfantastic IV
• Joyce Carol Oates (with Barry Moser) – First Love: A Gothic Tale
• Iona Opie – My Very First Mother Goose
• Philip Pullman – The Subtle Knife (second in His Dark Materials trilogy)
• Alan Schroeder – Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman
• Diane Stanley – Leonardo da Vinci
• Jean Ure – Skinny Melon and Me

Drama

• Jeff Baron – Visiting Mr. Green
• Nick Enright – Blackrock
• Eve Ensler – The Vagina Monologues
• Jon Fosse
  • Barnet (The Child)
  • Nokon kjem til å komme (Someone is going to come) (completed 1993)
• Pam Gems – Stanley
• Jenny Kemp – The Black Sequin Dress
• Ayub Khan-Din – East is East
• Martin McDonagh – The Beauty Queen of Leenane
• Mark Ravenhill – Shopping and Fucking
• Wallace Shawn – The Designated Mourner
• Joshua Sobol – Alma
• Shelagh Stephenson – The Memory of Water
• Botho Strauß – Ithaka
• Enda Walsh – Disco Pigs
• Peter Whelan – The Herbal Bed
• Roy Williams – The No Boys Cricket Club

Non-fiction

• Nelson Algren (posthumous) – Nonconformity (essay, written 1953)
• Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Álvaro Vargas Llosa – Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot (essay)
• Stephen Ambrose – Undaunted Courage
• Bruce Bawer (editor) – Beyond Queer
• John Berendt – Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• David Chalmers – The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory
• Norman Davies – Europe: A History
• Richard Dawkins – Climbing Mount Improbable
• David Denby – Great Books
• Antonia Fraser – The Gunpowder Plot: Terror and Faith in 1605<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Daniel Goleman – Emotional Intelligence
• Denis Guedj – Numbers: The Universal Language
• Jennifer Hanson – The Real Freshman Handbook
• Samuel P. Huntington – The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
• Richard Mabey – Flora Britannica
• Howard Marks – Mr Nice
• Dylan Morgan – The Principles of Hypnotherapy
• Anne Mullens – Timely Death<ref>Faculty of Arts, 1997, Edna Staebler Award Template:Webarchive, Wilfrid Laurier University, Previous winners, Anne Mullens. Retrieved 2012-11-17.</ref>
• Denise Schmandt-Besserat – How Writing Came About
• Arun Shourie – Missionaries in India
• Alexander Skutch – The Minds of Birds
• Alessandro Vezzosi – Leonardo da Vinci: The Mind of the Renaissance

Births

• May 29 - R. F. Kuang, American fantasy and contemporary fiction writer
• November 13 - Zeki Majed, Kurdish filmmaker and poet
• December 25 - Elvira Natali, Indonesian author and actress

Deaths

• January 5 – Lincoln Kirstein, American writer and impresario (born 1907)
• January 8 – Howard Taubman, American author and critic (born 1907)
• January 11 – Harold Walter Bailey, English linguistics scholar (born 1899)
• January 16 – Kaye Webb, English publisher and journalist (born 1914)<ref>Julia Eccleshare Obituary: Kaye Webb, The Independent, 18 January 1996.</ref>
• January 21 – Efua Sutherland, Ghanaian dramatist, poet and children's author (born 1924)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• January 27 – Barbara Skelton, English fiction writer, memoirist and literary figure (born 1916)
• January 28
  • Jerry Siegel, American cartoonist (born 1914)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
  • Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born poet and essayist, Nobel Prize laureate (myocardial infarction, born 1940)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• February 11
  • Bob Shaw, Northern Irish science fiction writer (born 1931)
  • Amelia Rosselli, Italian poet (born 1930)
• February 12 – Ryōtarō Shiba, Japanese novelist (born 1923)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• February 18 – Cathal Ó Sándair, Irish-language novelist (born 1922)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• March 3
  • Marguerite Duras, French dramatist and film director (born 1914)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • Léo Malet, French crime novelist and surrealist (born 1909)
• March 15 – Wolfgang Koeppen, German novelist (born 1906)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• March 18
  • Jacquetta Hawkes (née Hopkins), English writer and archeologist (born 1910)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • Odysseas Elytis, Greek writer and Nobel Prize laureate (born 1911)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• March 22
  • Claude Mauriac, French novelist and journalist (born 1914)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
  • Ian Stephens, Canadian poet (year of birth not known)
• March 29 – Frank Daniel, Czech-born screenwriter, director, and teacher (born 1926)
• March 31 – Dario Bellezza, Italian poet and dramatist (HIV, born 1944)
• April 16 – Leila Mackinlay, British romantic novelist (born 1910)
• April 18 – Kalim Siddiqui, Pakistani-born English writer and Islamic activist (born 1931)
• April 20 – Christopher Robin Milne, English writer and bookseller (born 1920)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• April 22 – Erma Bombeck, American humorist and writer (born 1927)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• April 23 – P. L. Travers, Australian-born children's writer (born 1899)
• May 2 – Emile Habibi, Palestinian Israeli writer and politician (born 1922)
• May 8 – Larry Levis, American poet, author, and critic (born 1946)
• May 24 – Joseph Mitchell, American journalist (born 1908)
• May 26
  • Ovidiu Papadima, Romanian critic and essayist (born 1909)
  • Margaret Douglas-Home, English writer and musician (born 1906)
• May 31 – Timothy Leary, American psychologist and writer (born 1920)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• June 2 – Leon Garfield, English children's author (born 1921)<ref>B. Copson, "Garfield, Leon (1921–1996)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP), September 2004; online edition January 2007</ref>
• June 14 – Gesualdo Bufalino, Italian novelist (born 1920)
• June 15 – Fitzroy Maclean, Scottish political writer, autobiographer and diplomat (born 1911)
• July 10 – Eno Raud, Estonian children's author (born 1928)
• July 22 – Jessica Mitford, English author, journalist and campaigner (born 1917)<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• September 21 – Henri Nouwen, Dutch priest, theologian and author (born 1932)
• September 29 – Shusaku Endo (遠藤周作), Japanese novelist (born 1923)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• October 16 – Eric Malpass, English novelist (born 1910)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• October 24 – Sorley Maclean, Gaelic poet (born 1911)
• November 27 – Lili Berger, Yiddish writer, antifascist militant and literary critic (born 1916)
• December 7 – José Donoso, Chilean writer (born 1924)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• December 9 – Diana Morgan, Welsh playwright and screenwriter (born 1908)
• December 12 – Vance Packard, American journalist and social critic (born 1914)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• December 16 – Quentin Bell, English biographer and art historian (born 1910)
• December 20 – Carl Sagan, American astronomer, astrophysicist and writer (born 1934)<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• December 21 – Margret Rey, American author and illustrator (born 1906)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Wislawa Szymborska
• Camões Prize: Eduardo Lourenço

Australia

• The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Bernard Cohen, The Blindman's Hat
• C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Peter Bakowski, In the Human Night
• Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Eric Beach, Weeping for Lost Babylon
• Mary Gilmore Prize: Jordie Albiston, Nervous Arcs
• Miles Franklin Award: Christopher Koch, Highways to a War

Canada

• Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award
• Giller Prize for Canadian Fiction: Margaret Atwood: – Alias Grace
• See 1996 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: George G. Blackburn, The Guns of Normandy<ref>Faculty of Arts, 1996, Edna Staebler Award Template:Webarchive, Wilfrid Laurier University, previous winners, George G. Blackburn, Retrieved 11/27/2012</ref>

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Graham Swift, Last Orders
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Melvin Burgess, Junk
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Graham Swift, Last Orders, and Alice Thompson, Justine
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life
• Cholmondeley Award: Elizabeth Bartlett, Dorothy Nimmo, Peter Scupham, Iain Crichton Smith
• Eric Gregory Award: Sue Butler, Cathy Cullis, Jane Griffiths, Jane Holland, Chris Jones, Sinéad Morrissey, Kate Thomas
• Orange Prize for Fiction: Helen Dunmore, A Spell of Winter
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Peter Redgrove
• Whitbread Best Book Award: Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level

United States

• Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Helen Conkling, Red Peony Night<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bernard F. Connors Prize for Poetry: John Voiklis, "The Princeling's Apology", and (separately) Sarah Arvio, "Visits from the Seventh"
• Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry: Kenneth Koch, One Train
• Compton Crook Award: Daniel Graham Jr., The Gatekeepers
• Hugo Award: Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
• National Book Award: Andrea Barrett, Ship Fever and Other Stories
• National Book Critics Circle Award: for Fiction Gina Berriault, Women in Their Beds
• National Book Critics Circle Award: for Poetry William Matthews, Time and Money
• National Book Critics Circle Award: for General nonfiction Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action
• National Book Critics Circle Award: for Biography Robert Polito, Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson
• Nebula Award: Nicola Griffith, Slow River
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Karen Cushman, The Midwife's Apprentice
• PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: Richard Ford, Independence Day
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Jonathan Larson, Rent<ref name=Pulitzer>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Richard Ford – Independence Day<ref name=Pulitzer />
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Jorie Graham: The Dream of the Unified Field<ref name=Pulitzer />
• Wallace Stevens Award: Adrienne Rich
• Whiting Awards: Fiction: Anderson Ferrell, Cristina García, Molly Gloss, Brian Kiteley, Chris Offutt (fiction/nonfiction), Judy Troy, A.J. Verdelle. Nonfiction: Patricia Storace (nonfiction/poetry). Poetry: Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Elizabeth Spires

Elsewhere

• International Dublin Literary Award: David Malouf, Remembering Babylon
• Premio Nadal: Pedro Maestre, Matando dinosaurios con tirachinas