1988 in literature

• March 7 – Nine thousand movie and television writers of the Writers' Guild of America go on strike a day after rejecting a final offer from producers.[1]
• May 28–31 – The first Hay Festival of literature is held in the Welsh Marches.
• June – The Panasonic Globe Theatre, Tokyo, opens with an Ingmar Bergman production of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• August 7 – The Writers Guild of America strike formally ends.[2]
• November 15 – Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 reforms copyright law in the United Kingdom, with special provision for Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children to benefit in perpetuity from royalties in J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.

Uncertain date

• Vasily Grossman's novel Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба, completed 1959) is first published in the Soviet Union, originally in the magazine Oktyabr.

• May 18 – Luu Quang Minh, Vietnamese writer and singer
• October 14 – Ocean Vuong, Vietnamese-American poet

Uncertain date

• Fiona Mozley, English novelist and medievalist

• February 3 – Robert Duncan, American poet (born 1919)
• February 6 – Marghanita Laski, English biographer, novelist and broadcaster (born 1915)
• February 28 – Kylie Tennant, Australian novelist, playwright and historian (born 1912)
• March 19 – Máirtín Ó Direáin, Irish-language poet (born 1910)
• May 3 – Premendra Mitra, Bengali poet, novelist and short story writer (born 1904)
• April 12 – Alan Paton, South African novelist and political activist (born 1903)
• April 15 – Modest Morariu, Romanian poet, essayist, prose writer and translator (born 1929)
• April 21 – I. A. L. Diamond, Bessarabian-born American comedy writer (born 1920)
• May 8 – Robert A. Heinlein, American science fiction writer (born 1907)
• June 10 – Louis L'Amour, American western novelist (born 1908)
• June 21 – George Ivașcu, Romanian journalist, literary critic, and communist militant (born 1911)
• July 10 – Enrique Lihn, Chilean poet, playwright, and novelist (cancer, born 1929)
• July 12 – Joshua Logan, American stage and film writer (born 1908)
• August 20 – Joan G. Robinson, English children's writer and illustrator (born 1910)
• August 23 – Menotti Del Picchia, Brazilian poet, journalist and painter (born 1892)
• August 28 – Max Shulman, American novelist, short-story writer and dramatist (born 1919)
• September 28 – Charles Addams, American cartoonist (born 1912)
• October 1 – Sacheverell Sitwell, English art critic (born 1897)
• October 16 – Christian Matras, Faroese poet (born 1900)
• November 2 – Stewart Parker, Northern Irish poet and playwright (cancer, born 1941)

Uncertain date

• Frank Bonham, American western and young adult novelist (born 1914)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Naguib Mahfouz