1995 in literature

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.
• 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 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.

• 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

Fiction

• Ben Aaronovitch – The Also People
• Louisa May Alcott – 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 – :de:Helden wie wir|Helden wie wir
• Christopher Bulis – The Sorcerer's Apprentice
• Edgar Rice Burroughs and Joe R. Lansdale – '
• T. C. Boyle – The Tortilla Curtain
• Albert Camus – The First Man
• 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 – '
• Umberto Eco – The Island of the Day Before
• Stanley Elkin – Mrs. Ted Bliss
• Nicholas Evans – The Horse Whisperer
• Timothy Findley – The Piano Man's Daughter
• Richard Ford – Independence Day
• Jon Fosse – Melancholy
• Carlos Fuentes – The Crystal Frontier
• 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
• Val McDermid – The Mermaids Singing
• David A. McIntee
• *Lords of the Storm
• *Sanctuary
• Andreï Makine – Dreams of My Russian Summers
• Henning Mankell – Chronicler of the Winds
• 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
• 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
• W. G. Sebald – Die Ringe des Saturn: Eine englische Wallfahrt
• Sidney Sheldon – Morning, Noon and Night
• 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!
• 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 – Ghostlight
• Jimmy Carter – The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer
• Donald Hall – The Pageant
• Virginia Hamilton – Her Stories: African American Folktales, Fairy Tales, and True Tales
• Joe R. Lansdale –
• Jim Murphy – The Great Fire
• Alison Prince – The Sherwood Hero
• Philip Pullman – Northern Lights
• Diana Pullein-Thompson – I Wanted a Pony
• Josephine Pullein-Thompson – Six Ponies
• Mario Vargas Llosa – Hitos y Mitos Literarios
• 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
• Sarah Kane – Blasted
• Terrence McNally – Master Class
• Yasmina Reza – The Unexpected Man
• 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 – 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 –
• 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
• Binod Bihari Verma – Tapasa vai Ganga Maithili, biography
• Ibn Warraq – Why I Am Not a Muslim
• Jane Wilson-Howarth – Bugs, Bites & Bowels

  Deaths

• January 9 – Peter Cook, English writer, comedian and satirist
• January 30 – Gerald Durrell, English nature writer and naturalist
• January 31 – George Abbott, American writer, director and producer
• February 4 – Patricia Highsmith, American crime novelist
• February 6 – Xia Yan, Chinese playwright and screenwriter,
• February 21
• *Robert Bolt, English dramatist
• *Calder Willingham, American writer
• February 23 – James Herriot, English veterinary novelist
• March 9 – Ian Ballantine, American publisher
• April 14 – Brian Coffey, Irish poet
• May 30 or May 31 – Ștefana Velisar Teodoreanu, Romanian novelist, memoirist and poet
• June 14 – Roger Zelazny, American fantasy and science fiction writer
• June 25 – Qiu Miaojin, Taiwanese Chinese novelist
• July 16
• *May Sarton, Belgian-born American poet, novelist and memoirist
• *Stephen Spender, English poet
• July 25 – Janice Elliott, English novelist and children's writer
• August 3 – Edward Whittemore, American novelist,
• August 19 – Pierre Schaeffer, French composer and writer
• August 29 – Michael Ende, German fantasy novelist
• October 13 – Henry Roth, Austrian-born American novelist and short story writer
• October 22 – Kingsley Amis, English novelist
• November 10 – Ken Saro-Wiwa, Nigerian writer
• November 13 – Mary Elizabeth Counselman, American author and poet
• November 16 – Robert H. Adleman, American novelist and historian
• November 17 – Marguerite Young, American novelist, poet and biographer
• November 22 – Margaret St. Clair, American science fiction writer
• December 2 – Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist
• December 9 – Toni Cade Bambara, American writer
• December 30 – Heiner Müller, German dramatist

  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 Non-Fiction: Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
• Pulitzer Prize for History: Doris Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
• Wallace Stevens Award: James Tate
• Whiting Awards:

  Elsewhere

• 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