1982 in literature

• February 17 – Philip K. Dick ignores advice to go immediately to hospital. A fortnight later, after two strokes, he is pronounced brain-dead and disconnected from his life-support machine.
• March 18 – A legal case brought on behalf of Mary Whitehouse against theater director Michael Bogdanov concerning alleged indecency in a performance of Howard Brenton's play The Romans in Britain at the National Theatre in London is dropped after the Attorney General intervenes.[1][2]
• June 25 – In Island Trees School District v. Pico (457 U.S. 853 (1982)), the Supreme Court of the United States concludes that "local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books and seek by their removal to 'prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.'"
• September – Banned Books Week is instituted in the United States.

Uncertain dates

• La Bicyclette bleue (The Blue Bicycle) by Régine Deforges becomes France's all-time bestselling novel.
• Sue Townsend's comic character Adrian Mole is introduced (as Nigel Mole, aged 13​¹⁄₄, living in the East Midlands of England) in a BBC Radio 4 play, and then on October 7 in the book The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, which sells 1.9 million copies in three years.[3]
• The Oxford Shakespeare under the general editorship of Stanley Wells begins publication.
• Dorling Kindersley, formerly a book packager, begins publishing.

• January 14 – Luke Wright, English poet
• February 5 – Lauren Gunderson, American playwright
• March 24 – Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir, Icelandic children's fiction writer
• May 10 – Jeremy Gable, English-American playwright
• June 15 – James Lamont, English television writer
• August 22 – Ash Lieb, Australian writer

Uncertain date

• James Graham, English playwright

• February 5 – Ronald Welch (Ronald Oliver Felton) Welsh novelist and children's writer writing in English (born 1909)
• February 11 – Albert Facey, Australian autobiographer (born 1894)
• February 18 – Dame Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand crime writer and theatre director (born 1895)
• March 2 – Philip K. Dick, American writer (stroke, born 1928)
• March 3 – Georges Perec, French novelist (lung cancer, born 1936)
• March 6 – Ayn Rand, Russian-born American novelist, playwright and screenwriter (born 1905)
• March 25 – Hugo Huppert, Austrian poet, writer and translator (born 1902)
• June 6 – Kenneth Rexroth, American poet and critic (born 1905)
• June 18
  • Djuna Barnes, American writer (born 1892)
  • John Cheever, American novelist and short story writer (born 1912)
• July 3 – Engvald Bakkan, Norwegian novelist and children's writer (born 1897)
• September 14 – John Gardner, American novelist (motorcycle accident, born 1933)
• October 7 – Alejandro Núñez Alonso, Spanish novelist (born 1905)
• December 5 – Caryl Brahms, English critic, novelist and journalist (born 1901)
• December 21 – Ants Oras, Estonian writer (born 1900)

Uncertain dates

• Ted Lewis, English novelist (born 1940)
• Barbara Sleigh, English children's writer (born 1906)

• Nobel Prize in Literature: Gabriel García Márquez