1982 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1982.
Events
- February 17 – Philip K. Dick ignores advice to go immediately to hospital. A fortnight later, after two strokes, he is pronounced brain-dead and disconnected from his life-support machine.
- March 18 – A legal case brought on behalf of Mary Whitehouse against theater director Michael Bogdanov concerning alleged indecency in a performance of Howard Brenton's play The Romans in Britain at the National Theatre in London is dropped after the Attorney General intervenes.
- June 25 – In Island Trees School District v. Pico, the Supreme Court of the United States concludes that "local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'"
- September – Banned Books Week is instituted in the United States.
- October 7 – After Sue Townsend's comic character Adrian Mole is introduced in a BBC Radio 4 play, the book The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, is released; it sells 1.9 million copies in three years.
- unknown dates
- *La Bicyclette bleue by Régine Deforges is a runaway success and becomes one of France's all-time bestselling novels.
- *The Oxford Shakespeare, under the general editorship of Stanley Wells, begins publication.
- *Dorling Kindersley, formerly a book packager, begins publishing.
New books
Fiction
- Brian Aldiss – Helliconia Spring
- Isabel Allende – The House of the Spirits
- Isaac Asimov – Foundation's Edge
- Jean M. Auel – The Valley of Horses
- René Barjavel – La Tempête
- Julian Barnes – Before She Met Me
- Saul Bellow - The Dean's December
- Michael Bishop – Blooded on Arachne
- William Boyd – An Ice-Cream War
- José Cardoso Pires – Balada da Praia dos Cães
- Arthur C. Clarke – 2010: Odyssey Two
- Bernard Cornwell – Sharpe's Company
- L. Sprague de Camp – The Virgin of Zesh & The Tower of Zanid
- L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter – Conan the Barbarian
- August Derleth – The Solar Pons Omnibus
- Marguerite Duras – The Malady of Death
- Zee Edgell – Beka Lamb
- Stanley Elkin – George Mills
- Buchi Emecheta – Destination Biafra
- Penelope Fitzgerald – At Freddie's
- Ken Follett – The Man from St. Petersburg
- John Fowles – Mantissa
- Max Frisch – Bluebeard
- John Gardner – For Special Services
- Graham Greene – Monsignor Quixote
- Robert A. Heinlein – Friday
- L. Ron Hubbard – Battlefield Earth
- Hammond Innes – The Black Tide
- Kazuo Ishiguro – A Pale View of Hills
- John Jakes – North and South
- Thomas Keneally – Schindler's Ark
- David Kesterton – The Darkling
- Stephen King
- *Different Seasons
- *Pet Sematary
- *The Running Man
- W. P. Kinsella – Shoeless Joe
- Judith Krantz – Mistral's Daughter
- Peter Kreeft – Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley
- Derek Lambert – The Red Dove
- Robert Ludlum – The Parsifal Mosaic
- Colleen McCullough – An Indecent Obsession
- Russell McCormmach – Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist
- Ngaio Marsh – Light Thickens
- George R. R. Martin – Fevre Dream
- James Merrill – The Changing Light at Sandover
- James A. Michener – Space
- Timothy Mo – Sour Sweet
- Harry Mulisch – The Assault
- Chris Mullin – A Very British Coup
- Gerald Murnane – The Plains
- Ellis Peters – The Virgin in the Ice
- Sidney Sheldon – Master of the Game
- Anne Tyler – Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
- Kurt Vonnegut – Deadeye Dick
- John Wain – Young Shoulders
- Alice Walker – The Color Purple
- Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice – Water Witch
- Gene Wolfe – The Citadel of the Autarch
- Roger Zelazny
- *Eye of Cat
- *''Dilvish, the Damned''
Children and young people
- Chris Van Allsburg – Ben's Dream
- Gillian Cross – The Demon Headmaster
- Roald Dahl – The BFG
- Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone – The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
- Margaret Mahy – The Haunting
- Michael Morpurgo – War Horse
- Ruth Park – The Muddle-Headed Wombat Stays at Home
- Bill Peet – The Luckiest One of All
- Claude Roy – The Cat who Talked in Spite of Himself
- Viveca Sundvall – En ettas dagbok
- Sue Townsend – ''The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾''
Drama
- Caryl Churchill – Top Girls
- Andrea Dunbar – Rita, Sue and Bob Too
- Peter Flannery – Our Friends in the North
- Michael Frayn – Noises Off
- Athol Fugard – "Master Harold"...and the Boys
- Elfriede Jelinek – Clara S, musikalische Tragödie
- Maryat Lee and the people of Hinton, West Virginia – A Double-Threaded Life: The Hinton Play
- Doug Lucie – Hard Feelings
- Stephen MacDonald – Not About Heroes
- Frank McGuinness – The Factory Girls
- Peter O'Donnell – Mr. Fothergill's Murder
- Tom Stoppard – The Real Thing
- August Wilson – ''Ma Rainey's Black Bottom''
Non-fiction
- Irving Abella and Harold Troper – None is Too Many
- Martin Amis – Invasion of the Space Invaders
- Luc Brisson – Plato the Myth Maker
- Beth Chatto – The Damp Garden
- Mark Ellingham – The Rough Guide to Greece
- Bruce Feirstein – Real Men Don't Eat Quiche
- Eduardo Galeano – Memoria del fuego, vol. 1
- Carol Gilligan – In a Different Voice
- Sita Ram Goel – How I Became a Hindu
- Rhys Isaac – The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790
- Ryszard Kapuściński – Shah of Shahs
- Gary Kinder – Victim: The Other Side of Murder
- Audre Lorde – Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
- Elaine Morgan – The Aquatic Ape
- John Naisbitt – Megatrends
- Fernando Pessoa – The Book of Disquiet
- Tom Peters – In Search of Excellence
- Erin Pizzey – Prone to Violence
- Richard Rodriguez – Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
- Richard Rorty – Consequences of Pragmatism
- Jonathan Schell – The Fate of the Earth
- Margaret Trudeau – Consequences
- Rebecca West – ''1900''
Births
- January 9 – Nora Bossong, German poet and writer
- January 14
- *Joe Dunthorne, Welsh novelist and poet
- *Luke Wright, English poet
- February 5 – Lauren Gunderson, American playwright
- February 23 – Kateryna Mikhalitsyna, Ukrainian poet, children's writer, translator and editor
- March 24 – BryndÃs Björgvinsdóttir, Icelandic children's fiction writer
- April 21 – Claybourne Elder, American actor, singer and writer
- May 10 – Jeremy Gable, English-American playwright
- June 29
- *Colin Jost, American actor, screenwriter and comedian
- * Ott Sepp, Estonian actor, singer, writer and television presenter
- July 8 – James Graham, English playwright
- July 16 – Angel David Revilla, Venezuelan journalist and writer
Deaths
- January 16 – Ramón J. Sender, Spanish novelist
- February 5 – Ronald Welch Welsh novelist and children's writer writing in English
- February 11 – Albert Facey, Australian autobiographer
- February 13 – Barbara Sleigh, English children's writer
- February 18 – Dame Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand crime writer and theatre director
- February 23 – Elisabeth Kyle, Scottish novelist
- March 2 – Philip K. Dick, American writer
- March 3 – Georges Perec, French novelist
- March 6 – Ayn Rand, Russian-born American novelist, playwright and screenwriter
- March 11 – Edmund Cooper, English writer and poet
- March 25
- * Goodman Ace, American humorist
- * Hugo Huppert, Austrian poet, writer and translator
- March 27
- * Harriet Adams, American novelist
- * Ted Lewis, English crime novelist
- April 12 – Norman Denny, English writer and translator
- May 10 – Peter Weiss, German writer and artist
- May 30 – Doris Leslie, English novelist
- June 6 – Kenneth Rexroth, American poet and critic
- June 18
- * Djuna Barnes, American writer
- * John Cheever, American novelist and short story writer
- June 30 – Malcolm Saville, English children's writer
- July 3 – Engvald Bakkan, Norwegian novelist and children's writer
- August 6 – S. K. Pottekkatt, Indian writer
- September 14 – John Gardner, American novelist
- October 7 – Alejandro Núñez Alonso, Spanish novelist
- October 22 – Savitri Devi, French-born writer and philosopher
- October 30 – Iryna Vilde, Ukrainian writer
- November 5 – Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Korean-American novelist
- November 6 – Frank Swinnerton, English novelist
- December 5 – Caryl Brahms, English critic, novelist and journalist
- December 21 – Ants Oras, Estonian writer
- December 24 – Louis Aragon, French poet and writer
Awards
Australia
- The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Brian Castro, Birds of Passage; Nigel Krauth, Matilda, My Darling
- Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Fay Zwicky, Kaddish and Other Poems
- Miles Franklin Award: Rodney Hall, ''Just Relations''
Canada
- See 1982 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
France
- Prix Goncourt: Dominique Fernandez, Dans la main de l'Ange
- Prix Médicis French: Jean-François Josselin, L'Enfer et Cie
- Prix Médicis International: Umberto Eco, ''The Name of the Rose''
Spain
United Kingdom
- Booker Prize: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark
- Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Margaret Mahy, The Haunting
- Cholmondeley Award: Basil Bunting, Herbert Lomas, William Scammell
- Eric Gregory Award: Steve Ellis, Jeremy Reed, Alison Brackenbury, Neil Astley, Chris O'Neill, Joseph Bristow, John Gibbens, James Lasdun
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hill
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Richard Ellmann, James Joyce
- Whitbread Best Book Award: Bruce Chatwin, ''On the Black Hill''
United States
- Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Lawrence Joseph, Shouting at No One
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction, Bernard Malamud
- Nebula Award for Best Novel: Michael Bishop, No Enemy But Time
- Newbery Medal for children's literature: Nancy Willard, A Visit to William Blake's Inn
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Charles Fuller, A Soldier's Play
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: John Updike – Rabbit Is Rich
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Sylvia Plath: ''The Collected Poems''
Elsewhere
- Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: George F. Kennan
- Hugo Award for Best Novel: Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh
- Premio Nadal: Fernando Arrabal, ''La torre herida por un rayo''