1990 in literature

• March – Anton Chekhov's play Three Sisters opens at the Gate Theatre in Dublin with locally born Sinéad, Sorcha and Niamh Cusack in the title rôles and their father Cyril Cusack as Dr. Chebutykin.[1]
• March 20 – Stephen Blumberg is arrested for stealing more than 23,600 books in North America.
• c. June – J. K. Rowling has the idea for Harry Potter while on a train from Manchester to London: "I was staring out the window, and the idea for Harry just came. He appeared in my mind's eye, very fully formed. The basic idea was for a boy who didn't know what he was." She begins writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, which will be completed in 1995 and published in 1997.
• October – Nicci Gerrard marries Sean French in the London Borough of Hackney, to make up a writing team known as Nicci French.
• Uncertain date – Austrian writer Ernest Bornemann is awarded the first Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for sexual research.

• March 29 – Kiran Millwood Hargrave, English poet, playwright and novelist

• February 27 – Alexandru Rosetti, Romanian linguist, editor and memoirist (burns, born 1895)
• May 10 – Walker Percy, American novelist (born 1916)
• May 25 – Lucy M. Boston, English children's novelist (born 1892)
• July 15 – Zaim Topčić, Yugoslav and Bosnian writer (born 1920)
• July 22 – Manuel Puig, Argentine novelist (heart attack, born 1932)[2]
• August 25 – Morley Callaghan, Canadian novelist, playwright and broadcasting personality (born 1903)
• September 8 – Denys Watkins-Pitchford, English children's writer (born 1905)
• September 26 – Alberto Moravia, Italian novelist and journalist (born 1907)
• September 30 – Patrick White, Australian novelist (born 1912)
• October 23 – Louis Althusser, French Marxist philosopher (heart attack, born 1918)[3]
• November 7 – Lawrence Durrell, English novelist, dramatist, and travel writer (born 1912)
• November 8 – Anya Seton, American genre novelist (born 1904)[4]
• November 23 – Roald Dahl, Welsh-born children's author (myelodysplastic syndrome, born 1916)[5]
• November 24 – Dodie Smith, English novelist and dramatist (born 1899)
• December 1 – Irma Chilton, Welsh children's writer in Welsh and English (born 1930)
• December 7 – Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright (suicide, born 1943)[6]
• December 11 – David Turner, English dramatist (born 1927)
• December 20 – Andrea Dunbar, English playwright (born 1961)
• December 14 – Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Swiss dramatist (congestive heart failure, born 1921)[7]

Uncertain date

• Clare Hoskyns-Abrahall, English biographer and children's writer (born 1900)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Octavio Paz
• Europe Theatre Prize: Giorgio Strehler
• Camões Prize: João Cabral de Melo Neto