See also: 1958 in literature, other events of 1959, 1960 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

New books

• Advertisement for Myself - Norman Mailer
• Advise and Consent - Allen Drury
• The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - Mordecai Richler
• The Children of Gebelaawi - Naguib Mahfouz
• Children of the Wolf - Alfred Duggan
• Dear and Glorious Physician - Taylor Caldwell
• The Defeat of the Spanish Armada - Garett Mattingly
• The Elements of Style - William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
• Exodus - Leon Uris
• Goldfinger - Ian Fleming
• Goodbye, Columbus - Philip Roth
• The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
• Hawaii - James A. Michener
• Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow
• The Magic Christian - Terry Southern
• Mountolive - Lawrence Durrell
• Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris - Paul Gallico
• Naked Lunch - William S. Burroughs
• Poor No More - Robert Ruark
• Psycho - Robert Bloch
• Rape of the Fair Country - Alexander Cordell
• Sink the Bismarck! aka The Last Nine Days of the Bismark - C.S. Forester
• The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
• Starship Troopers - Robert Heinlein
• The Tin Drum - Günter Grass
• The Ugly American - William J. Lederer and Eugene L. Burdick

Births

• May 3 - Ben Elton, British comedian and author
• October 31 - Neal Stephenson - science fiction writer
• R. A. Salvatore, science-fiction and fantasy author

Deaths

• February 28 - Maxwell Anderson, playwright, film writer
• March 26 - Raymond Chandler, American novelist.
• June 23 - Boris Vian, French novelist

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond
• Nobel Prize for literature: Salvatore Quasimodo
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Archibald MacLeish, J. B.
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Robert Lewis Taylor, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Stanley Kunitz, Selected Poems 1928-1958