1969 in literature

• February 8 – After 147 years, the last issue of The Saturday Evening Post in its original form appears in the United States.
• March 23 – German-born writer Assia Wevill, a mistress of the English poet Ted Hughes and ex-wife of the Canadian poet David Wevill, gasses herself and their daughter at her London home.
• August – "Penelope Ashe", purported author of a bestselling novel, Naked Came the Stranger, is revealed as a group of Newsday journalists.[1]

Uncertain dates

• The first Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction is awarded to P. H. Newby for Something to Answer For.
• Pramoedya Ananta Toer begins ten years' imprisonment for his political beliefs, served on island prison colonies in Indonesia. During his sentence he composes, orally, his Buru Quartet of novels.
• The Times Literary Supplement begins using the abbreviation "TLS" on its title page.[2]

• January 12 – David Mitchell, English novelist
• January 17 – Michael Moynihan, American journalist and publisher
• January 21 – M. K. Hobson, American speculative fiction author
• March – Jez Butterworth, English dramatist and screenwriter
• May 6 – Emmanuel Larcenet, French comics author
• May 28 – Muriel Barbery, French novelist
• May 29 – Qiu Miaojin (邱妙津), Korean-born novelist (suicide 1995)
• June 13 – Virginie Despentes, French writer
• July 5 – Armin Kõomägi, Estonian author and screenwriter
• August 4 – Jojo Moyes, English journalist and romantic novelist
• October 24 – Emma Donoghue, Irish-born Canadian novelist, dramatist, and academic
• November 13 – John Belluso, American dramatist (died 2006)
• November 28 – Hanne Ørstavik, Norwegian novelist
• November 30 – David Auburn, American dramatist

Uncertain dates

• Adrian Goldsworthy, British military historian and novelist
• John Harris, English writer, journalist and critic
• Tom McCarthy, English novelist

• January 11 – Richmal Crompton, English children's writer (born 1890)
• January 21 – Giovanni Comisso, Italian writer (born 1895)
• March 11 – John Wyndham, English science fiction novelist (born 1903)
• March 24 – Margery Fish, English gardening writer (born 1892)
• March 26 – John Kennedy Toole, American novelist (suicide, born 1937)
• March 27 – B. Traven, presumed German-born novelist (unknown year of birth)
• May 4 – Osbert Sitwell, English novelist and poet (born 1892)
• July 24 – Witold Gombrowicz, Polish playwright and novelist (born 1904)
• July 27 – Vivian de Sola Pinto, English poet and memoirist (born 1895)
• August 14 – Leonard Woolf, English political theorist (born 1880)
• August 27 – Ivy Compton-Burnett, English novelist (born 1884)
• September 6 – Gavin Maxwell, Scottish naturalist and author (cancer, born 1914)
• September 17 – Greye La Spina, American dramatist and short story writer (born 1880)
• September 20 – Elinor Brent-Dyer, English children's writer (born 1894)
• September 22 – Rachel Davis Harris, African American librarian (born 1869)
• October 21 – Jack Kerouac, American novelist and poet (internal hemorrhage, born 1922)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Samuel Beckett