1987 in literature

• January 2 – Golliwogs in Enid Blyton children's books are replaced by the British publisher with gnomes after complaints of a racial offence implication.[1]
• April – K. W. Jeter coins the term "Steampunk" in a letter published in Locus: the magazine of the science fiction & fantasy field.
• June – Virago Press of London publishes Down the Road, Worlds Away, a collection of short stories ostensibly by Rahila Khan, a young Muslim woman living in England. Three weeks later, Toby Forward, an Anglican clergyman, admits to writing them and the publisher withdraws the book. "He, unlike the editors at Virago, had grown up in precisely the kind of area and social conditions that the book described.... Although the book never claimed to be other than a work of fiction, the publishers destroyed the stock still in the warehouse and recalled all unsold copies from the bookshops, thus turning it into an expensive bibliographical rarity."[2]
• July 31 – The United Kingdom Attorney General takes legal proceedings on security grounds against the London paper The Daily Telegraph to prevent it publishing details of the book Spycatcher.[3] On September 23, an Australian court lifts its ban on the book's publication.[4]
• August – A new building for the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington opens.

Uncertain dates

• Tom Wolfe is paid US $5 million for the film rights to his novel The Bonfire of the Vanities (published in book format in October), a record fee to an author at this time.[5]
• Ian Rankin's Knots and Crosses, first of the Inspector Rebus detective novels set around Edinburgh, is published in London.

• December 15 – Mayra Dias Gomes, Brazilian journalist and columnist

Uncertain dates

• Mina Adampour, Norwegian journalist, politician and activist of Iranian origin
• Katherine Rundell, English children's writer and academic brought up in Zimbabwe and Belgium

• January 15 – George Markstein, German-born English journalist and thriller writer (kidney failure, born 1926)
• February 2 – Alistair MacLean, Scottish thriller writer (heart attack, born 1922)
• February 4 – Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Welsh journalist and broadcaster (born 1908)
• February 10 – William Rose, American screenwriter (born 1918)
• February 22 – Andy Warhol, American artist, director and writer (cardiac arrhythmia, born 1928)[7]
• March 4 – Maria Jolas (Maria McDonald), American-born French publisher and campaigner (born 1893)
• April 4 – C. L. Moore, American science fiction author (born 1911)[8]
• April 11 – Erskine Caldwell, American novelist (born 1903)
• May 13 – Richard Ellmann, American-born biographer (born 1918)
• May 18 – Heðin Brú, Faroese fiction writer and translator (born 1901)
• May 30 – Norman Nicholson, English poet (born 1914)
• June 6 – Fulton Mackay, Scottish actor and playwright (born 1922)
• June 7 – Humberto Costantini, Argentinian writer (cancer, born 1924)
• July 26 – Tawfiq al-Hakim, Egyptian novelist and dramatist (born 1898)
• September 1 – Alan Reid ("Red Fox"), English-born Australian journalist (cancer, born 1914)
• September 25 – Emlyn Williams, Welsh dramatist (born 1905)
• September 30 – Alfred Bester, American science fiction writer (born 1913)
• October 3 – Jean Anouilh, French dramatist (born 1910)
• October 8 – Roger Lancelyn Green, English biographer and children's author (born 1918)
• October 31 – Joseph Campbell, American author and mythology expert (born 1904)
• November 29 – Gwendolyn MacEwen, Canadian poet (alcohol-related, born 1941)
• December 1 – James Baldwin, African American novelist (stomach cancer, born 1924)
• December 17 – Marguerite Yourcenar, French novelist and essayist (born 1903)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Joseph Brodsky