1988 in Australian literature

This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1988.

Events

 * Peter Carey won the 1988 Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda
 * The Miles Franklin Award was not awarded this year as the date was changed from year of publication to year of announcement.

Novels

 * Peter Carey — Oscar and Lucinda
 * Liam Davison — The Velodrome
 * Rodney Hall — Captivity Captive
 * Dorothy Johnston — Maralinga, My Love
 * Thomas Keneally — Act of Grace
 * Gerald Murnane — Inland
 * Morris West — Masterclass
 * Tim Winton — In the Winter Dark

Short stories

 * Olga Masters — The Rose Fancier
 * Frank Moorhouse — Forty-Seventeen

Children's and young adult fiction

 * Graeme Base — The Eleventh Hour
 * Hesba Fay Brinsmead — When You Come to the Ferry
 * P. L. Travers — Mary Poppins and the House Next Door
 * Gillian Rubinstein — Beyond the Labyrinth
 * Tim Winton — Jesse

Crime fiction

 * Jon Cleary — Now and Then, Amen
 * Marele Day — The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender (first in the Claudia Valentine series)

Poetry

 * Gwen Harwood — Bone Scan
 * Judith Rodriguez — The House by Water: New and Selected Poems
 * John Tranter — Under Berlin

Drama

 * Andrew Bovell — After Dinner
 * Jan Cornall — Escape from a Better Place

Non-fiction

 * Tom Cole — Hell West and Crooked
 * Peter Conrad — Down Home: Revisiting Tasmania
 * Laurie Hergenhan (editor) — The Penguin New Literary History of Australia
 * Eric Rolls — A Million Wild Acres
 * Dale Spender — Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers

Awards and honours

 * Dorothy Auchterlonie Green, for "service to Australian literature, particularly as a writer, critic and teacher"
 * Elizabeth Jolley, for "service to Australian literature"
 * Rosemary Wighton, for "public service, to literature and to the community"
 * Tom Hungerford, for "service to literature"
 * David Martin (poet), for "service to Australian literature"
 * Gavin Souter, for "service to literature and journalism"
 * Len Beadell, for "service to the Public service and to literature"

Deaths
A list, ordered by date of death (and, if the date is either unspecified or repeated, ordered alphabetically by surname) of deaths in 1988 of Australian literary figures, authors of written works or literature-related individuals follows, including year of birth.


 * 4 January — Alice Duncan-Kemp, writer and Indigenous rights activist (born 1901)
 * 28 February — Kylie Tennant, novelist, playwright, short-story writer, critic, biographer and historian (born 1912)
 * 31 July — Stephen Murray-Smith, writer, editor and educator (born 1922)
 * 12 November — Vincent Buckley, poet, teacher, editor, essayist and critic (born 1925)