1962 in literature

• January 7 – In an article in The New York Times Book Review, Gore Vidal calls Evelyn Waugh "our time's first satirist".[1]
• February 17 – Arthur Miller marries the photographer Inge Morath.[2]
• February 28 – F. R. Leavis delivers the Richmond lecture Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow at Downing College, Cambridge, which arouses controversy.[3][4]
• May 11 – The Finnish Ministry of Education forbids the import and distribution of eight children's books (including Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), published by Kynäbaari, because of the poor quality and clandestine abridgement of the translations.[5]
• May – Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell are prosecuted and jailed for defacing library books in London.
• June 30 – The works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are denounced by the Roman Catholic Church.
• July – The General Law Amendment Act in South Africa denies freedom of speech to opposition activists and writers.
• September – Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath separate.[6] From the beginning of the following month, Plath experiences a burst of creativity, writing in the last few months of her life most of the poems on which her reputation will rest. They include many that will appear in Ariel and Winter Trees. In December she moves to a London flat in a house where W. B. Yeats lived as a boy.
• November – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Russian: Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича, Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha), the author's semi-autobiographical account of life in the gulag, is published in Novy Mir in an unprecedented acknowledgement of the Soviet Union's Stalinist past.
• December – L. Frank Baum's short story "The Tiger's Eye" appears for the first time nearly 60 after it was written.
• December 4 – A tape-recorded conversation on science fiction takes place between Kingsley Amis, C. S. Lewis and Brian Aldiss in Lewis's rooms at Cambridge.

Uncertain dates

• Lynne Reid Banks goes to live in a kibbutz.
• George Oppen publishes his first collection of poetry since Discrete Series in 1934, breaking a 28-year silence. He goes on to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1969.
• A parallel text edition of George Bernard Shaw's play Androcles and the Lion is published posthumously by Penguin Books in the UK, as the first work in the phonetic Shavian alphabet devised by Ronald Kingsley Read.

• January 17 – Sebastian Junger, American novelist, journalist and documentary film-maker
• January 29 – Olga Tokarczuk, Polish fiction writer and poet
• February 8 – Malorie Blackman, English writer for young adults and children
• February 21
  • Chuck Palahniuk, American novelist and journalist
  • David Foster Wallace, American novelist and essayist (died 2008)
• March 30 – Yōko Ogawa (小川 洋子), Japanese novelist and essayist
• March 31 – Michal Viewegh, Czech fiction writer
• April 2 – Mark Shulman, American children's author
• April 6 – Javier Cercas, Spanish novelist and academic
• April 13 – Chris Riddell, South African-born English children's book illustrator
• April 22 – B. Jeyamohan, Tamil novelist
• May 12 – Yang Hongying (楊紅櫻), Chinese children's author
• May 17 – Lise Lyng Falkenberg, Danish novelist and biographer
• May 19 – Jonathan Dee, American novelist
• June 12 – Jordan Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist and writer
• July 30 – Lavinia Greenlaw, English poet and novelist
• August 10 – Suzanne Collins, American novelist and television writer
• August 16 – Christian Cameron, American-born Canadian writer
• August 27 – Sjón (Sigurjón Birgir Sigurðsson), Icelandic novelist and poet
• September 22 - Nuzo Onoh, British-Nigerian writer
• October 19 – Tracy Chevalier, American historical novelist
• October 28 – Mark Haddon, English novelist and poet
• November 12
  • Neal Shusterman, American children's author and poet
  • Naomi Wolf, American writer and activist
• December 17 – Jan Bondeson, Swedish non-fiction writer

• January 17 – Gerrit Achterberg, Dutch poet (heart attack, born 1905)
• January 20 – Robinson Jeffers, American poet (born 1887)
• January 24 – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Turkish novelist and essayist (born 1901)
• February 16 – Frank Prewett, Canadian poet (born 1893)
• February 24 – Hu Shih (胡適), Chinese Nobel Prize-winning philosopher and language reformer (born 1891)
• March 3 – Pierre Benoit, French novelist (born 1886)
• April or May – Constantin Gane, Romanian biographer and historical novelist (born 1885)
• April 24 – Emilio Prados, Spanish poet and editor (born 1899)
• May 24 – E. M. W. Tillyard, English literary scholar (born 1889)
• May 26 – Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, English poet (born 1878)
• June 2 – Vita Sackville-West, English poet and gardener (born 1892)
• June 27 – Paul Viiding, Estonian poet and critic (born 1904)
• July 6 – William Faulkner, American novelist and Nobel laureate (born 1897)
• July 8 – Georges Bataille, French writer (cerebral arteriosclerosis, born 1897)
• July 21 – G. M. Trevelyan, English historian (born 1876)
• July 27 – Richard Aldington, English poet and novelist (born 1892)
• August 9 – Hermann Hesse, German-born Swiss novelist, poet and painter (born 1877)
• September 3 – E. E. Cummings, American poet (born 1894)
• September 21 – Ouyang Yuqian (欧阳予倩), Chinese dramatist (born 1889)
• September 22 – Jean-René Huguenin, French novelist and literary critic (born in 1936)
• September 23 – Patrick Hamilton, English dramatist (liver and kidney failure, born 1904)
• November 17 – Sandu Tudor, Romanian poet, journalist and theologian (stroke and possibly torture, born 1896)
• December 3 – Dame Mary Gilmore, Australian poet and journalist (born 1865)
• December 12 – Felix Aderca, Romanian novelist, critic, poet and journalist (cancer, born 1891)
• December 18 – Garrett Mattingly, American historian (born 1900)

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction: William Faulkner
• Carnegie Medal for children's literature: Pauline Clarke, The Twelve and the Genii
• Eric Gregory Award: Donald Thomas, James Simmons, Brian Johnson, Jenny Joseph
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Ronald Hardy, Act of Destruction
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Meriol Trevor, Newman: The Pillar and the Cloud and Newman: Light in Winter
• Miles Franklin Award: Thea Astley, The Well Dressed Explorer and George Turner, The Cupboard Under the Stairs
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Elizabeth George Speare, The Bronze Bow
• Newdigate Prize: Stanley Johnson
• Nobel Prize for Literature: John Steinbeck
• Premio Nadal: José María Mendiola, Muerte por fusilamiento
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Edwin O'Connor, The Edge of Sadness
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Alan Dugan, Poems
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Christopher Fry

• July – The main events of Ian McEwan's 2007 novella On Chesil Beach occur.
• August 22 – Attempted assassination of French President Charles de Gaulle, the springboard for Frederick Forsyth's 1971 thriller The Day of the Jackal.