1977 in literature

• February 20 – An episode of Doctor on the Go, co-written by Douglas Adams and Graham Chapman, marks the beginning of Adams' career as a writer for BBC radio.
• March 4 – Andrés Caicedo's novel ¡Que viva la música! ("Let Music Live!", translated as Liveforever) is published in his hometown of Cali, Colombia. This afternoon he commits suicide by overdose, aged 25.
• July 11 – The English magazine Gay News is found guilty of blasphemous libel for publishing a homoerotic poem, "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name" by James Kirkup, in a case (Whitehouse v Lemon) at the Old Bailey in London, on behalf of Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers and Listeners Association. John Mortimer appears for the defence. It is the first such prosecution since 1921 and will be the last before the offense is abolished in 2008.[1][2]
• September 15 – Christopher Tolkien, with Guy Gavriel Kay, completes and publishes his late father's work, The Silmarillion.
• Fall – Philosophy and Literature appears as an academic journal founded at Johns Hopkins University. It explores connections between literary and philosophical studies, presenting ideas on the aesthetics of literature, critical theory, and the philosophical interpretation of literature.
• October – Norman Mailer punches Gore Vidal in the face at a New York City party.
• December – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o and Ngugi wa Mirii are detained in Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, Kenya, six weeks after the première of their political Kikuyu language play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) at the open-air Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre. While imprisoned, Ngũgĩ will write the first modern novel in Kikuyu, Devil on the Cross (Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ), on prison-issue toilet paper.

Uncertain date

• V. S. Naipaul declines the offer of a CBE.

• February 21 – Jonathan Safran Foer, American novelist
• August 24 – John Green, American author and YouTube vlogger[7]
• October 16 – Laura Wade, English playwright
• September 15 – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian novelist
• November 12 – Richelle Mead, American young-adult novelist

Uncertain date

• Tena Štivičić, Croatian playwright

• January 14 – Anaïs Nin, French-Cuban erotic novelist and diarist (born 1903)
• February 27 – John Dickson Carr, American crime novelist (born 1906)
• March 4
  • Andrés Caicedo, Colombian novelist and cinéaste (suicide, born 1951)
  • Alexandru Ivasiuc, Romanian novelist (killed in earthquake, born 1933)
• March 15 – Hubert Aquin, French Canadian novelist, essayist and political activist (suicide, born 1929))
• April 7 – Jim Thompson, American fiction writer (born 1906)
• April 11 – Jacques Prévert, French poet and screenwriter (born 1900)
• May 9 – James Jones, American novelist (heart failure, born 1921)
• July 2 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian/American novelist (born 1899)
• August 26 – H. A. Rey, German-born American children's writer and illustrator (born 1898)
• September 4 – E. F. Schumacher, German-born economist (born 1911)
• September 12 – Robert Lowell, American poet (heart attack, born 1917)
• October 27 – James M. Cain, American novelist and newspaperman (born 1892)
• November 10 – Dennis Wheatley, English occult novelist (born 1897)
• November 30
  • Miloš Crnjanski, Serbian poet and novelist (born 1893)
  • Terence Rattigan, English dramatist (bone cancer, born 1911)
• December 9 – Clarice Lispector, Brazilian novelist (ovarian cancer, born 1920)
• December 22 – Frank Thiess, German novelist (born 1890)

Uncertain dates

• William Glynne-Jones, Welsh novelist and children's writer (born 1907)
• Héctor Germán Oesterheld, Argentine comic book writer (disappearance, born 1919)
• Gurbaksh Singh Preetlari, Punjabi novelist (born 1914)

• Nobel Prize in Literature: Vicente Aleixandre