1995 in literature

• January 12 – The première of Sarah Kane's complete Blasted at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in London provokes outrage.[1]
• February 28 – The Diary of Bridget Jones column first appears in The Independent newspaper (London).[2]
• March 1 – The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea is opened by Jimmy Carter.[3]
• 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.[4][5]
• August – Blackwell UK becomes the first British bookseller to offer online purchasing.[6]
• 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.[7]
• Fjærland in Norway becomes a book town.[8]

• 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 – 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)
• April 14 – Brian Coffey, Irish poet (born 1905)
• 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 25 – Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津), Taiwanese Chinese novelist (suicide, born 1969)
• 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 19 – Pierre Schaeffer, French composer and writer (born 1910)
• August 29 – Michael Ende, German fantasy novelist (born 1929)
• October 13 – Henry Roth, Austrian-born American novelist and short story writer (born 1906)
• October 22 – Kingsley Amis, English novelist (born 1922)
• 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 22 – Margaret St. Clair, American science fiction writer (born 1911)[9]
• 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)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Seamus Heaney
• Camões Prize: José Saramago