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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1995.

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Events

  • January 12 – The première of Sarah Kane's complete Blasted at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London provokes outrage.
  • February 28 – The Diary of Bridget Jones column first appears in The Independent newspaper (London).
  • March 1 – The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea is opened by Jimmy Carter.
  • April 23 – World Book Day is first celebrated.
  • July 16 – Amazon.com, incorporated a year earlier by Jeff Bezos in Washington (state) as an online bookstore, sells its first book: Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought.
  • August – Blackwell UK becomes the first British bookseller to offer online purchasing.
  • December 13 – The released film of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility has an Academy Award-winning screenplay by Emma Thompson.

Uncertain dates

  • Simon & Schuster pays US$4.2 million for hardcover publishing rights to The Christmas Box, self-published by Richard Paul Evans, which has appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.
  • Fjærland in Norway becomes a book town.

New books

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Fiction

  • Ben Aaronovitch – The Also People
  • Louisa May Alcott (posthumous) – A Long Fatal Love Chase
  • Roger MacBride Allen
  • Ambush at Corellia
  • Assault at Selonia
  • Showdown at Centerpoint
  • Julia Alvarez – In the Time of the Butterflies
  • Martin Amis – The Information
  • Kevin J. Anderson – Darksaber
  • Iain Banks – Whit
  • Pat Barker – The Ghost Road
  • Daniel Blythe – Infinite Requiem
  • Thomas Brussig – Helden wie wir (Heroes Like Us)
  • Christopher Bulis – The Sorcerer's Apprentice
  • Edgar Rice Burroughs and Joe R. Lansdale – Tarzan: the Lost Adventure
  • T. C. Boyle – The Tortilla Curtain
  • Albert Camus (posthumous) – The First Man (Le Premier Homme, unfinished)
  • Andrew Cartmel – Warlock
  • Mary Higgins Clark – Silent Night
  • Michael Connelly – The Last Coyote
  • Paul Cornell – Human Nature
  • Bernard Cornwell
  • Sharpe's Battle
  • Battle Flag
  • The Winter King
  • Douglas Coupland – Microserfs
  • Robert Crais – Voodoo River
  • Michael Crichton – The Lost World
  • Maurice G. Dantec – Les Racines du mal
  • Martin Day – The Menagerie
  • L. Sprague de Camp and Christopher Stasheff – The Exotic Enchanter
  • Samuel Delany – Hogg
  • Terrance Dicks – Shakedown: Return of the Sontarans
  • Umberto Eco – The Island of the Day Before
  • Stanley Elkin – Mrs. Ted Bliss
  • Kirill Eskov – The Gospel of Afranius («Евангелие от Афрания»)
  • Nicholas Evans – The Horse Whisperer
  • Timothy Findley – The Piano Man's Daughter
  • Richard Ford – Independence Day
  • Jon Fosse – Melancholy (Melancholia I)
  • Carlos Fuentes – The Crystal Frontier (La frontera de cristal)
  • John Gardner – GoldenEye
  • John Grisham – The Rainmaker
  • Barbara Hambly – Children of the Jedi
  • Craig Hinton – Millennial Rites
  • Nick Hornby – High Fidelity
  • Kazuo Ishiguro – The Unconsoled
  • Elfriede Jelinek – The Children of the Dead
  • Jo Jung-rae – Arirang
  • Welwyn Wilton Katz – Out of the Dark
  • Stephen King – Rose Madder
  • Joe R. Lansdale – The Two-Bear Mambo
  • John le Carré – Our Game
  • Andy Lane
  • The Empire of Glass
  • Original Sin
  • Paul Leonard
  • Dancing the Code
  • Toy Soldiers
  • Jonathan Lethem – Amnesia Moon
  • Barry Letts – The Ghosts of N-Space
  • Robert Ludlum – The Apocalypse Watch
  • Steve Lyons
  • Head Games
  • Time of Your Life
  • Frank McCourt – Angela's Ashes (semi-autobiographical)
  • Val McDermid – The Mermaids Singing
  • David A. McIntee
  • Lords of the Storm
  • Sanctuary
  • Andreï Makine – Dreams of My Russian Summers (Le Testament français)
  • Henning Mankell – Chronicler of the Winds (Comédia infantil)
  • Stephen Marley – Managra
  • Zakes Mda – Ways of Dying
  • James A. Michener – Miracle in Seville
  • Rohinton Mistry – A Fine Balance
  • Mary McGarry Morris – Songs in Ordinary Time
  • Kate Orman – Set Piece
  • Terry Pratchett – Maskerade
  • Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
  • Relic
  • Mount Dragon
  • Christoph Ransmayr – The Dog King (Morbus Kitahara)
  • Jean Raspail – L'Anneau du pêcheur
  • Justin Richards – System Shock
  • Andrew Roberts – The Aachen Memorandum
  • Gareth Roberts
  • The Romance of Crime
  • Zamper
  • J. Jill Robinson – Eggplant Wife
  • Philip Roth – Sabbath's Theater
  • Salman Rushdie – The Moor's Last Sigh
  • Gary Russell – Invasion of the Cat-People
  • Josè Saramago – Blindness (Ensaio sobre a cegueira)
  • Bernhard Schlink – The Reader
  • W. G. Sebald – Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine englische Wallfahrt (The Rings of Saturn: An English Pilgrimage)
  • Sidney Sheldon – Morning, Noon and Night
  • Jane Smiley - Moo
  • Danielle Steel – Five Days In Paris
  • Neal Stephenson – The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
  • James B. Stewart – Blood Sport
  • Dave Stone – Sky Pirates!
  • Olga Tokarczuk – E.E.
  • Jim Turner, editor – Cthulhu 2000: A Lovecraftian Anthology
  • Andrew Vachss – Footsteps of the Hawk
  • Robert James Waller – Puerto Vallarta Squeeze
  • Dave Wolverton – The Courtship of Princess Leia

Children and young people

  • Chris Van Allsburg – Bad Day at Riverbend
  • Elizabeth Arnold – The Parsley Parcel
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley (with Rosemary Edghill) – Ghostlight
  • Jimmy Carter (illustrated by Amy Carter) – The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer
  • Donald Hall (with Barry Moser) – The Pageant
  • Virginia Hamilton (with Leo and Diane Dillon) – Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales
  • Joe R. Lansdale – Tarzan: the Lost Adventure
  • Fran Manushkin (with Ned Bittinger) – The Matzah That Papa Brought Home
  • Jim Murphy – The Great Fire
  • Alison Prince – The Sherwood Hero
  • Philip Pullman – Northern Lights (in US as The Golden Compass)
  • Diana Pullein-Thompson – I Wanted a Pony
  • Josephine Pullein-Thompson – Six Ponies
  • Mario Vargas Llosa (with Willi Glasauer) – Hitos y Mitos Literarios (The Milestones and the Stories of Greatest Literary Works)
  • Judith Viorst – Alexander, Who Is Not (Do You Hear Me? I Mean It!) Going to Move
  • Jacqueline Wilson – Double Act

Drama

  • Parv Bancil – Papa Was A Bus Conductor
  • Jez Butterworth – Mojo
  • Margaret Edson – Wit
  • Horton Foote – The Young Man From Atlanta
  • Jon Fosse – The Name (Namnet)
  • Ronald Harwood – Taking Sides
  • Sarah Kane – Blasted
  • Terrence McNally – Master Class
  • Lynn Nottage
  • Crumbs from the Table of Joy
  • Por'Knockers
  • Yasmina Reza – The Unexpected Man (L'homme du hasard)
  • Tom Stoppard – Indian Ink

Poetry

  • Mark Doty – Atlantis: Poems

Non-fiction

  • André Aciman – Out of Egypt
  • Jean Baudrillard – The Gulf War Did Not Take Place
  • John G. Bennett (posthumously) – The Masters of Wisdom
  • George G. Blackburn – The Guns of Normandy
  • Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams – The Craft of Research
  • Pascal Bruckner – The Temptation of Innocence
  • L. Sprague de Camp – The Ape-Man Within
  • Tim Cornell – The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars
  • Paul Davies – About Time
  • Robin Dunbar – The Trouble with Science
  • Mark Epstein – Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective
  • Bill Gates – The Road Ahead
  • Doris Kearns Goodwin – No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
  • Richard Hoffman – Half the House: A Memoir<!--- no article about this author --->
  • Nelson Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom
  • Leonard Nimoy – I Am Spock
  • Leslie and Les Parrott – Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts
  • Man Ray and André Breton – Man Ray, 1890–1976
  • Condoleezza Rice and Philip Zelikow – Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft
  • Oliver Sacks – An Anthropologist on Mars
  • Simon Schama – Landscape and Memory
  • Sterling Seagrave – Lords of the Rim
  • Miranda Seymour – Robert Graves: Life on the Edge
  • Howard Stern – Miss America
  • Ibn Warraq – Why I Am Not a Muslim
  • Jane Wesman – Dive Right In: The Sharks Won't Bite
  • Jane Wilson-Howarth – Bugs, Bites & Bowels (later editions as The Essential Guide to Travel Health)

Films

  • Sense and Sensibility

Births

  • June 7 - Beth Reekles, Welsh author of young adult fiction
  • June 13 - S. C. Megale, American novelist and screenwriter

Deaths

  • January 9 – Peter Cook, English writer, comedian and satirist (born 1937)
  • January 30 – Gerald Durrell, English nature writer and naturalist (born 1925)
  • January 31 – George Abbott, American writer, director and producer (born 1887)
  • February 4 – Patricia Highsmith, American crime novelist (born 1921)
  • February 6
  • James Merrill, American poet (born 1926)
  • Xia Yan (夏衍), Chinese playwright and screenwriter, (born 1900)
  • February 14 – Mary Paik Lee, Korean-American writer (born 1900)
  • February 20 – Robert Bolt, English dramatist (born 1924)
  • February 21 – Calder Willingham, American writer (born 1922)
  • February 23 – James Herriot, English veterinary novelist (born 1916)
  • March 9 – Ian Ballantine, American publisher (born 1916)
  • March 20 – Sidney Kingsley, American dramatist (born 1906)
  • April 14 – Brian Coffey, Irish poet (born 1905)
  • April 27 – Willem Frederik Hermans, Dutch writer (born 1921)
  • May 30 or May 31 – Ștefana Velisar Teodoreanu, Romanian novelist, memoirist and poet (born 1897)
  • June 14 – Roger Zelazny, American fantasy and science fiction writer (born 1937)
  • June 15 – Charles Bennett, English screenwriter (born 1899)
  • June 20 – Emil Cioran, Romanian philosopher and essayist (born 1911)
  • June 21– Katarína Lazarová, Slovak novelist and translator (born 1914)
  • June 25 – Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津), Taiwanese Chinese novelist (suicide, born 1969)
  • July 6 – Aziz Nesin, Turkish writer (born 1915)
  • July 13 – Ashapoorna Devi, Indian author and poet (born 1908)
  • July 16
  • May Sarton, Belgian-born American poet, novelist and memoirist (born 1912)
  • Stephen Spender, English poet (born 1909)
  • July 25 – Janice Elliott, English novelist and children's writer (born 1931)
  • August 3 – Edward Whittemore, American novelist, (born 1933)
  • August 17 – Howard Koch, American screenwriter (born 1901)
  • August 19 – Pierre Schaeffer, French composer and writer (born 1910)
  • August 29 – Michael Ende, German fantasy novelist (born 1929)
  • September 8 – Eileen Chang, Chinese writer (born 1920)
  • October 13 – Henry Roth, Austrian-born American novelist and short story writer (born 1906)
  • October 22 – Kingsley Amis, English novelist (born 1922)
  • October 29 – Terry Southern, American screenwriter (born 1924)
  • November 4 – Gilles Deleuze, French philosopher (born 1925)
  • November 10 – Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian writer (executed, born 1941)
  • November 13 – Mary Elizabeth Counselman, American author and poet (born 1911)
  • November 16 – Robert H. Adleman, American novelist and historian (born 1919)
  • November 17 – Marguerite Young, American novelist, poet and biographer (born 1908)
  • November 20 – Robie Macauley, American writer and literary critic (born 1919)
  • November 22 – Margaret St. Clair, American science fiction writer (born 1911)
  • December 2 – Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist (born 1913)
  • December 9 – Toni Cade Bambara, American writer (born 1939)
  • December 30 – Heiner Müller, German dramatist (born 1929)

Awards

  • Nobel Prize for Literature: Seamus Heaney
  • Camões Prize: José Saramago

Australia

  • The Australian/Vogel Literary Award: Richard King, Kindling Does For Firewood
  • C. J. Dennis Prize for Poetry: Bruce Beaver, Anima and Other Poems
  • Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry: Peter Boyle, Coming Home From the World
  • Mary Gilmore Prize: Aileen Kelly, Coming Up for Light
  • Miles Franklin Award: Helen Demidenko, The Hand That Signed the Paper

Canada

  • Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award
  • Giller Prize for Canadian Fiction: Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
  • See 1995 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
  • Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction: Denise Chong, The Concubine's Children

France

  • Prix Goncourt: Andreï Makine, Le Testament français
  • Prix Décembre: Jean Échenoz, Les Grandes Blondes
  • Prix Médicis French: Vassilis Alexakis, La Langue maternelle and Andreï Makine, Le testament français
  • Prix Médicis International: Alessandro Baricco, Châteaux de la colère

United Kingdom

  • Booker Prize: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
  • Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Philip Pullman, Northern Lights
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Christopher Priest, The Prestige
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Gitta Sereny, Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth
  • Cholmondeley Award: U. A. Fanthorpe, Christopher Reid, C. H. Sisson, Kit Wright
  • Eric Gregory Award: Colette Bryce, Sophie Hannah, Tobias Hill, Mark Wormald
  • Newdigate prize: Antony Dunn
  • Whitbread Book of the Year Award: Kate Atkinson, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

United States

  • Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize: Sandy Solomon, Pears, Lake, Sun
  • Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry: Maxine Kumin
  • American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction, William Maxwell
  • Carnegie Medal: Philip Pullman, Northern Lights
  • Compton Crook Award: Doranna Durgin, Dun Lady's Jess
  • Hugo Award: Lois McMaster Bujold, Mirror Dance
  • Nebula Award: Robert Sawyer, The Terminal Experiment
  • Newbery Medal for children's literature: Sharon Creech, Walk Two Moons
  • Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Horton Foote, The Young Man From Atlanta
  • Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
  • Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Philip Levine, The Simple Truth
  • Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography: Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life
  • Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction: Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
  • Pulitzer Prize for History: Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
  • Wallace Stevens Award: James Tate
  • Whiting Awards:

:Fiction: Michael Cunningham, Reginald McKnight, Matthew Stadler, Melanie Sumner

:Nonfiction: André Aciman, Lucy Grealy (nonfiction/poetry), Suzannah Lessard, Russ Rymer

:Poetry: James L. McMichael, Mary Ruefle

Elsewhere

  • Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Annemarie Schimmel
  • New Zealand Book Award for Poetry: Michele Leggott, Dia
  • Montana Book Award for Poetry: Michael Jackson, Pieces of Music
  • Premio Nadal: Ignacio Carrión Hernández, Cruzar el Danubio
  • Premio San Clemente: Xurxo Borrazás, Vicious

Notes

References

  • Popular Books of 1995 at Goodreads