Events

• Deliverance by American poet James Dickey published. In 2001, the book would be named as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.

New books

• Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull
• Nina Bawden - The Birds on the Trees
• Pierre Berton - The National Dream
• Judy Blume - Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret
• Jim Bouton - Ball Four
• Wallace Breem - Eagle in the Snow
• Jimmy Breslin - The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight
• Taylor Caldwell - Great Lion of God
• Robertson Davies - Fifth Business
• L. Sprague de Camp
  • The Reluctant Shaman and Other Fantastic Tales
  • Warlocks and Warriors (ed.)
• Samuel R. Delany - The Fall of the Towers
• James Dickey - Deliverance
• José Donoso - The Obscene Bird of Night ((El obsceno pájaro de la noche)
• Lawrence Durrell - Nunquam
• J. G. Farrell - Troubles
• Anne Hébert - Kamouraska
• Ernest Hemingway - Islands in the Stream
• Susan Hill - I'm the King of the Castle
• Pamela Hansford Johnson - The Honours Board
• Anna Kavan - Julia and the Bazooka
• Jaan Kross - Between Three Plagues (part 1)
• Ira Levin - This Perfect Day
• H. P. Lovecraft - The Horror in the Museum and Other Revisions
• John D. MacDonald - The Long Lavender Look
• Eric Malpass - Oh My Darling Daughter
• Ruth Manning-Sanders - A Book of Devils and Demons
• Yukio Mishima - The Decay of the Angel last book in the The Sea of Fertility series
• Brian Moore - Fergus
• Toni Morrison - The Bluest Eye
• Larry Niven - Ringworld
• John Jay Osborn, Jr. - The Paper Chase
• Robert W. Peterson - Only the Ball was White
• Kurban Said - Ali and Nino
• Erich Segal - Love Story
• Sidney Sheldon - The Naked Face
• Clark Ashton Smith - Other Dimensions
• Muriel Spark - The Driver's Seat
• Mary Stewart - The Crystal Cave
• Leon Uris - QB VII
• Jack Vance - The Pnume
• E. B. White - The Trumpet Of The Swan
• Roger Zelazny - Nine Princes in Amber

New drama

• Dario Fo - Accidental Death of an Anarchist
• Anthony Shaffer - Sleuth

Poetry

• L. Sprague deCamp - Demons and Dinosaurs

Non-fiction

• Dee Brown - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
• Henri Charrière - Papillon
• August Derleth - Thirty Years of Arkham House, 1939-1969: A History and Bibliography
• Helene Hanff - 84 Charing Cross Road
• Arthur Janov - The Primal Scream
• Mahathir bin Mohamad - The Malay Dilemma
• Kate Millet - Sexual Politics
• Nancy Mitford - Frederick the Great
• Albert Speer - Inside the Third Reich
• Alvin Toffler - Future Shock

Births

• September 10 - Phaswane Mpe, novelist, (d. 2004)
• September 16 - Nick Sagan, novelist and screenwriter
• September 24 - Gemma Moraleja Paz, poet and novelist
• October 27 - Jonathan Stroud, fantasy writer
• unknown date - Alex Garland, novelist
• unknown date - Chris Adrian, novelist
• unknown date - Nathan Englander, author

Deaths

• January 10 - Charles Olson, poet
• January 29 - Basil Liddell Hart, military historian
• February 2 - Bertrand Russell, philosopher
• March 11 - Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason author
• March 29 - Vera Brittain, novelist and poet
• April 11 - John O'Hara, novelist
• May 12 - Nelly Sachs, poet and dramatist
• June 3 - Adrian Conan Doyle, son and literary executor of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• June 7 - E. M. Forster, novelist
• June 16 - Elsa Triolet, novelist
• July 15 - Eric Berne, psychiatrist and author
• September 1 - François Mauriac, novelist
• September 28 - John Dos Passos, novelist
• November 25 - Yukio Mishima, Japanese author and rightist political activist (suicide)

Awards

• Nobel Prize for Literature: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Canada

• See 1970 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: Michel Tournier, Le Roi des Aulnes
• Prix Médicis French: Camille Bourniquel, Sélinonte ou la Chambre impériale
• Prix Médicis International: Luigi Malerba, Saut de la mort

United Kingdom

• Booker Prize: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
• Cholmondeley Award: Kathleen Raine, Douglas Livingstone, Edward Brathwaite
• Eric Gregory Award: Helen Frye, Paul Mills, John Mole, Brian Morse, Alan Perry, Richard Tibbitts
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Lily Powell, The Bird of Paradise
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Roy Fuller

United States

• Hugo Award: Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
• Nebula Award: Larry Niven, Ringworld
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: William H. Armstrong, Sounder
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Charles Gordone, No Place To Be Somebody
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Jean Stafford, Collected Stories
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Richard Howard, Untitled Subjects

Elsewhere

• Premio Nadal: Jesús Fernández Santos, Libro de las memorias de las cosas
• Viareggio Prize: Nello Saito, Dentro e fuori