1986 in Australian literature

Events

• Elizabeth Jolley won the 1986 Miles Franklin Award for The Well
• The Melbourne Writers Festival is held for the first time

Major publications

Novels

• Margaret Barbalet — Blood in the Rain
• Janine Burke — Second Sight
• Blanche d'Alpuget — Winter in Jerusalem
• Elizabeth Jolley — The Well
• Rod Jones — Julia Paradise
• John Macgregor — Propinquity
• Christina Stead — I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist
• Alan Wearne — The Nightmarkets
• Morris West — Cassidy
• Tim Winton — That Eye, the Sky
• Patrick White — ''Memoirs of Many in One''

Crime and mystery

• Peter Corris
• * Deal Me Out
• * The Greenwich Apartments
• Tony Kenrick — ''China White''

Science fiction and fantasy

• George Turner — "Shut the Door When You Go Out"
• Cherry Wilder — ''The Summer's King''

Short stories

• Janette Turner Hospital — Dislocations
• Joan London — Sister Ships and Other Stories
• Sally Morgan — "The Letter"
• Archie Weller — Going Home
• Tim Winton — "Swimming to Salvation"

Children's and young adult fiction

• Graeme Base — Animalia
• Hesba Fay Brinsmead — Someplace Beautiful
• Victor Kelleher — Taronga
• Doug MacLeod — Sister Madge's Book of Nuns
• Emily Rodda — Pigs Might Fly
• Gillian Rubinstein — ''Space Demons''

Poetry

• Lily Brett — The Auschwitz Poems
• Robert Harris — The Cloud Passes Over
• Philip Hodgins — Blood and Bone
• Rhyll McMaster — Washing the Money : Poems with Photographs
• Jan Owen — Boy with a Telescope
• John A. Scott — ''St. Clair: Three Narratives''

Drama

• Michael Gow — ''Away''

Non-fiction

• Gillian Bouras — A Foreign Wife
• Robert Hughes — The Fatal Shore
• Kylie Tennant — ''The Missing Heir''

Awards and honours

• Geoffrey Serle, for "service to scholarship and literature, particularly in the field of Australian history"
• Nicholas Hasluck, for "service to literature"
• Dorothy Hewett, for "service to literature"
• Barbara Jefferis, for "service to literature"
• Grace Perry, for "service to Australian literature, particularly as editor of Poetry Australia"
• Russel Ward, for "service to literature, particularly in the field of Australian history"

Poetry

Drama

Births

• 23 August — Jack Heath, writer of fiction for children and adults

Deaths

• 2 March — Margaret Trist, novelist and short story writer
• 27 September — Olga Masters, writer, journalist, novelist and short story writer
• 10 November — Laurence Collinson, British and Australian playwright, actor, poet, journalist, and secondary school teacher