See also: 1960 in literature, other events of 1961, 1962 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• The Moviegoer by Walker Percy is published.
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Scottish author Muriel Spark is published.
• V. S. Naipaul's book, A House for Mr. Biswas, is published.
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is published.

New books

• The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone
• El astillero (The Shipyard) - Juan Carlos Onetti
• Call for the Dead - John le Carré
• The Carpetbaggers - Harold Robbins
• Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
• Daughter of Silence - Morris West
• Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
• A House for Mr. Biswas - V. S. Naipaul
• James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl
• The Long Revolution - Raymond Williams (non-fiction)
• Mila 18 - Leon Uris
• The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
• A Passion in Rome - Morley Callaghan
• The Pawnbroker - Edward Lewis Wallant
• The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
• Resistance, Rebellion, and Death - Albert Camus
• Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
• A Severed Head - Iris Murdoch
• The Stainless Steel Rat - Harry Harrison
• The Stone Angel - Margaret Laurence
• Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert Heinlein
• This Sweet Sickness - Patricia Highsmith
• Thunderball - Ian Fleming
• 'Twixt Twelve and Twenty - Pat Boone
• Venusberg - Anthony Powell
• The Wall - John Hersey
• The Winter of Our Discontent - John Steinbeck
• Zima Junction - Yevegeny Yevtushenko

Births

• February 21 - Chuck Palahniuk, author
• September 27 - Irvine Welsh, author
• December 30 - Douglas Coupland, author
• Greg Egan, author

Deaths

• January 10 - Dashiell Hammett, author
• January 21 - Blaise Cendrars, author
• July 2 - Ernest Hemingway, author

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Scott O'Dell, Island of the Blue Dolphins
• Nobel Prize for literature - Ivo Andric
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Tad Mosel , All The Way Home
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Phyllis McGinley : Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades