1997 in literature

• February 20 – Allen Ginsberg makes a final public appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam.[1] He continues to write through his final illness, his last poem being "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)" written on March 30.[2]
• May 27 – Shakespeare's Globe in London, a reconstruction of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre, opens with a production of Shakespeare's Henry V.
• June 3 – The supposed climax of Max Beerbohm's 1916 short story "Enoch Soames" occurs at the old British Museum Reading Room in London.
• June 26 – J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is published in London by Bloomsbury Publishing, in an edition of 500 copies.
• July 13 – The release occurs in Ireland) of the film of Patrick McCabe's 1992 novel The Butcher Boy. The author plays Jimmy The Skite, the town drunk.
• October – The online literary magazine Jacket is founded.
• November 24 – The new British Library building in London designed by Colin St John Wilson opens to readers.
• December 30 – The memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is removed from the ninth-grade English curriculum in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, for portraying "white people as being horrible, nasty, stupid people".[3]

Uncertain dates

• Tom Clancy signs a deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. giving him US $50 million for the world English rights to two new books. A second agreement pays another $25 million for a four-year book/multimedia deal, and a third, with Berkley Books for 24 paperbacks to tie in with an ABC television miniseries for $22 million.
• Janet Dailey admits to plagiarism of the novels of the fellow American bestselling romance writer Nora Roberts.[4][5]

• January 19 – James Dickey, American poet and novelist (born 1923)[7]
• February 3 – Bohumil Hrabal, Czech novelist (born 1914)
• February 18 – Emily Hahn, American journalist and author (born 1905)
• April 5 – Allen Ginsberg, American poet (liver cancer, born 1926)[1]
• May 9 – Rina Lasnier, Canadian poet (born 1915)
• May 23 – Alison Adburgham, English social historian and journalist (born 1912)
• June 8 – George Turner, Australian novelist and critic (born 1916)
• July 26 – Joseph Henry Reason, American librarian (born 1905)[8]
• August 2 – William S. Burroughs, American novelist (born 1914[9]
• August 16 – Gerard McLarnon, Irish actor and playwright (born 1915)
• August 27 – Johannes Edfelt, Swedish poet, translator and critic (born 1904)
• October 14 – Harold Robbins, American novelist (born 1916)
• October 16 – James A. Michener, American novelist and historian (born 1907)
• November 6 – Leon Forrest, African American novelist and essayist (cancer, born 1937)[10]
• November 30 – Kathy Acker, American novelist and poet (breast cancer, born 1947)[11]

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Dario Fo
• Europe Theatre Prize: Robert Wilson
• Camões Prize: Pepetela