See also: 1968 in literature, other events of 1969, 1970 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• The first Booker Prize is awarded;

• Penelope Ashe, author of bestselling novel, Naked Came the Stranger is found to be several people who each took a turn writing a chapter of what they described as "junk" in order to prove that sex-filled trash sells. It did.

New books

• Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle - Vladimir Nabokov
• The Andromeda Strain - Michael Crichton
• The Campus Murders - Ellery Queen
• The Edible Woman - Margaret Atwood
• The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
• The Godfather - Mario Puzo
• The Green Man - Kingsley Amis
• The Inheritors - Harold Robbins
• Jirel of Joiry - C. L. Moore
• Little Painted Mouths - Manuel Puig
• The Love Machine - Jacqueline Susann
• Mary Queen of Scots - Antonia Fraser
• Naked Came the Stranger - Penelope Ashe
• Nothing Black But A Cadillac - Raymond Spence
• A Pocketful of Rye - A.J. Cronin
• Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
• Retour à Roissy - Pauline Réage
• Sounder - William H. Armstrong
• The Seven Minutes - Irving Wallace
• The Street - Mordecai Richler
• That Godless Woman - Merton H. Coleman
• The Veiled Sultan - March Cost
• War Against The Mafia - Don Pendleton

Births

Deaths

• January 11 - Richmal Crompton, author
• March 11 - John Wyndham, British author
• March 26 - John Kennedy Toole, author
• March 27 - B. Traven, writer
• October 21 - Jack Kerouac, author

Awards

• Booker Prize: P. H. Newby - Something to Answer For
• See 1969 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
• Hugo Award: John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar
• Nebula Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Lloyd Alexander, The High King
• Nobel Prize for Literature: Samuel Beckett
• Prix Goncourt: Félicien Marceau, Creezy
• Prix Médicis: Hélène Cixous, Dedans
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Howard Sackler , The Great White Hope
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: N. Scott Momaday - House Made of Dawn
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: George Oppen: Of Being Numerous
• Viareggio Prize: Fulvio Tomizza , L'albero dei sogni