1995 in literature

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

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.

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
 * 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 21
 * Robert Bolt, English dramatist (born 1924)
 * 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 Non-Fiction: 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

 * 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