This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1997.
Events
- February 20 â Allen Ginsberg makes a final public appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam. He continues to write through his final illness, his last poem being "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)" written on March 30.
- May 27 â Shakespeare's Globe in London, a reconstruction of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre, opens with a production of Shakespeare's Henry V.
- June 3 â The supposed climax of Max Beerbohm's 1916 short story Enoch Soames occurs at the old British Museum Reading Room in London.
- June 26 â J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is published in London by Bloomsbury Publishing, in an edition of 500 copies.
- July 13 â The release occurs in Ireland of the film of Patrick McCabe's 1992 novel The Butcher Boy. The author plays Jimmy The Skite, the town drunk.
- September 1 â The Adventures of Captain Underpants, the first in Dav Pilkey's series of children's novels, is published by Scholastic in the United States.
- October â The online literary magazine Jacket is founded.
- November 24 â The new British Library building in London designed by Colin St John Wilson opens to readers.
- December 30 â The memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is removed from the ninth-grade English curriculum in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, for portraying "white people as being horrible, nasty, stupid people".
Uncertain dates
- Tom Clancy signs a deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. giving him US $50 million for the world English rights to two new books. A second agreement pays another $25 million for a four-year book/multimedia deal, and a third, with Berkley Books for 24 paperbacks to tie in with an ABC television miniseries for $22 million.
- Janet Dailey admits to plagiarism of the novels of the fellow American bestselling romance writer Nora Roberts.
New books
Fiction
Children and young people
Drama
Poetry
Non-fiction
Births
Deaths
- January 19 â James Dickey, American poet and novelist (born 1923)
- February 3 â Bohumil Hrabal, Czech novelist (born 1914)
- February 18 â Emily Hahn, American journalist and author (born 1905)
- March 21 - Wilbert Awdry, British Anglican reverend and author (born 1911)
- April 5 â Allen Ginsberg, American poet (liver cancer, born 1926)
- May 9 â Rina Lasnier, Canadian poet (born 1915)
- May 23 â Alison Adburgham, English social historian and journalist (born 1912)
- June 8 â George Turner, Australian novelist and critic (born 1916)
- June 11 â Susanna Roth, Swiss bohemist and literary translator (born 1950)
- July 26 â Joseph Henry Reason, American librarian (born 1905)
- August 2 â William S. Burroughs, American novelist (born 1914
- August 16 â Gerard McLarnon, Irish actor and playwright (born 1915)
- August 27 â Johannes Edfelt, Swedish poet, translator and critic (born 1904)
- October 14 â Harold Robbins, American novelist (born 1916)
- October 16 â James A. Michener, American novelist and historian (born 1907)
- November 6 â Leon Forrest, African American novelist and essayist (cancer, born 1937)
- November 30 â Kathy Acker, American novelist and poet (breast cancer, born 1947)
- December 14 â Owen Barfield, British philosopher, author and poet (born 1898)
Awards
Australia
Canada
France
Spain
United Kingdom
- Booker Prize: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
- Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Tim Bowler, River Boy
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Andrew Miller, Ingenious Pain
- James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: R. F. Foster, William Butler Yeats: A Life, Volume 1 â The Apprentice Mage 1965-1914
- Cholmondeley Award: Alison Brackenbury, Gillian Clarke, Tony Curtis, Anne Stevenson
- Eric Gregory Award: Matthew Clegg, Sarah Corbett, Polly Clark, Tim Kendall, Graham Nelson, Matthew Welton
- Orange Prize for Fiction: Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
- Whitbread Best Book Award: Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid
United States
Fiction: Josip Novakovich (fiction/nonfiction), Melanie Rae Thon
Nonfiction: Jo Ann Beard, Suketu Mehta (fiction/nonfiction), Ellen Meloy
Plays: Erik Ehn
Poetry: Connie Deanovich, Forrest Gander, Jody Gladding, Mark Turpin
Elsewhere
Notes
References