# 2020 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2020.

## Events

* April 14 – Bookshops are among the first few premises permitted to reopen on relaxation of restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy.
* May 26–July 10 – J. K. Rowling releases her new fairy tale The Ickabog in free online instalments during restrictions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom.
* June 25 – Louisa May Alcott's unfinished "Aunt Nellie's Story" (c.1849) is first published, in The Strand Magazine.
* July 31 – 2020 Booker Prize longlisted (later shortlisted) author Tsitsi Dangarembga is arrested in Zimbabwe as part of a government crackdown ahead of anti-corruption protests.
* August – The Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, purchases Das Große Stammbuch, an album amicorum compiled by diplomat Philipp Hainhofer, which the library's patron Augustus the Younger, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, tried but failed to acquire following Hainhofer's death in 1647.
* October 13 – A first issue first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone sells at auction in the UK for £60,000 and a copy of Isaac Newton's The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in the 1729 English translation (the second to sell in recent weeks) for £24,000.
* October 14 – A Shakespeare First Folio sells at auction in New York City for $9.98M (£7.6M) (50% more than the previous copy auctioned in 2001).
* November 25 – Penguin Random House agrees to acquire rival publisher Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS for US$2.175 billion.

## New books

Dates after each title indicate the first publication, unless otherwise indicated.
ISBN in first citation always refers to the first edition published. Links should point to first edition, though they may point to newer editions by the same publisher. If the publisher does not present the first edition online, a second citation is provided with a link to a newer one on the publisher's site.
OCLC may represent other ISBNs in some cases.

### Fiction

| Author | Work | Date | Publisher |
| Gil Adamson | Ridgerunner | May 12 | House of Anansi |
| Becky Albertalli | Love, Creekwood | Jun 30 | HarperCollins |
| Deepa Anappara | Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line | Jan 30 | Random House |
| Marianne Apostolides | I Can't Get You Out of My Mind | Apr 7 | |
| John Banville | Snow | Sep 29 | |
| Deni Ellis Béchard | A Song from Faraway | Apr 7 | |
| Brit Bennett | The Vanishing Half | Jun 2 | Riverhead Books |
| David Bergen | Here the Dark | Mar 10 | |
| Chetan Bhagat | One Arranged Murder | Sep 28 | |
| Christopher Bollen | A Beautiful Crime | Jan 28 | Harper |
| Amina Cain | Indelicacy | Feb 11 | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Maisy Card | These Ghosts Are Family | Jul 28 | Simon & Schuster |
| Marjorie Celona | How a Woman Becomes a Lake | Mar 3 | |
| Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle | Even As We Breathe | Nov 18 | |
| Susanna Clarke | Piranesi | Sep 15 | Bloomsbury |
| Steven Conte | The Tolstoy Estate | Sep 2 | |
| Diane Cook | The New Wilderness | Aug 11 | Harper |
| S.A Cosby | Blacktop Wasteland | Jul 14 | Flatiron Books |
| Eva Crocker | All I Ask | Jun 2 | |
| Raphaël Enthoven | Le Temps gagné (Time Saved) | Aug 19 | |
| Louise Erdrich | The Night Watchman | Mar 3 | HarperCollins |
| William Gibson | Agency | Jan 21 | |
| Georgi Gospodinov | Времеубежище (Time Shelter) | | |
| John Gould | The End of Me | May 2 | |
| Alix E. Harrow | The Once and Future Witches | Oct 13 | Redhook Books |
| Aislinn Hunter | The Certainties | May 19 | |
| Clifford Jackman | The Braver Thing | May 12 | Random House Canada |
| Tomasz Jędrowski | Swimming in the Dark | Feb 6 | Bloomsbury |
| Meng Jin | Little Gods | Jan 14 | Custom House |
| Stephen Graham Jones | The Only Good Indians | Jul 14 | Saga Press |
| Sue Monk Kidd | The Book of Longings | Apr 21 | Penguin Group |
| Thomas King | Obsidian | Jan 28 | |
| Karl Ove Knausgård | Morgenstjernen | Sep 18 | |
| Hervé Le Tellier | L'anomalie (The Anomaly) | Aug 20 | |
| Raven Leilani | Luster | Aug 4 | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Kathy Lette | HRT: Husband Replacement Therapy | Apr 28 | |
| Juliana Delgado Lopera | Fiebre Tropical | Mar 3 | Feminist Press |
| Pasha Malla | Kill the Mall | May 12 | |
| Emily St. John Mandel | The Glass Hotel | Mar 24 | HarperCollins Knopf |
| Hilary Mantel | The Mirror and the Light | Mar 5 | Fourth Estate |
| Laura Jean McKay | The Animals in That Country | Nov 10 | Scribe Australia |
| Shani Mootoo | Polar Vortex | Mar 3 | |
| Silvia Moreno-Garcia | Mexican Gothic | Jun 30 | Del Rey |
| Maria Mutch | Molly Falls to Earth | Apr 28 | |
| Maggie O'Farrell | Hamnet | Mar 31 | Tinder Press |
| Katrina Onstad | Stay Where I Can See You | Mar 31 | |
| Ingrid Persaud | Love After Love | Apr 2 | Faber & Faber |
| Kate Pullinger | Forest Green | Apr 28 | |
| Lisa Robertson | The Baudelaire Fractal | Jan 21 | |
| Monique Roffey | The Mermaid of Black Conch | Apr 2 | Peepal Tree Press |
| Lydia Sandgren | Samlade verk | Mar 31 | Albert Bonniers Förlag |
| Vivek Shraya | The Subtweet | Apr 7 | |
| Ali Smith | Summer | Aug 6 | Hamish Hamilton Anchor |
| Cordelia Strube | Misconduct of the Heart | Apr 21 | |
| Douglas Stuart | Shuggie Bain | Feb 11 | Grove Atlantic |
| Zoe Sugg and Amy McCulloch | The Magpie Society: One for Sorrow | Oct 29 | |
| Brandon Taylor | Real Life | Feb 18 | Riverhead Books |
| Souvankham Thammavongsa | How to Pronounce Knife | Apr 7 | |
| Dianne Warren | The Diamond House | Jun 2 | |
| Martha Wells | Network Effect | May 5 | Tor.com |
| Charles Yu | Interior Chinatown | Jan 28 | Pantheon Books |
| C Pam Zhang | How Much of These Hills Is Gold | Apr 7 | Riverhead Books |

### Children and young people

* Raymond Antrobus – Can Bears Ski? (November 10, UK)
* Sophie Blackall – If You Come to Earth (September 15)
* Peter Brown – The Wild Robot Escapes
* Jordan Ifueko – Raybearer (August 8)
* Tae Keller – When You Trap a Tiger
* Jeff Kinney
** Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Deep End (October 27)
** Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure (August 4)
* E. Lockhart – Again Again (June 2)
* J. K. Rowling – The Ickabog (November, UK, book publication)
* Trung Le Nguyen – The Magic Fish (graphic novel)
* Jacqueline Wilson – Love Frankie (August 20, UK)

### Poetry

* Eavan Boland (died 2020) – The Historians (October 29, UK)
* Lana Del Rey – Violet Bent Backwards over the Grass (September 29)
* Carolyn Forché – In The Lateness of The World: Poems (March 10)
* Srikanth Reddy – Underworld Lit (August 4)

### Drama

* Ben Elton – The Upstart Crow
* David Hare – Beat the Devil
* David Williamson – Family Values

### Non-fiction

* Craig Brown – One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time (April 10, UK)
* Emily Levesque – The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers
* Dara McAnulty – Diary of a Young Naturalist (May 21, UK)
* James Nestor – Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art (May 26)
* Barack Obama - A Promised Land (November 17, US)
* Camilla Pang – Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships (March 12, UK)
* Jay Parini – Borges and Me: An Encounter
* Stuart Ritchie – Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth (July 21, UK)
* Megan Rosenbloom – Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
* Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig – A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America
* Peter Sloterdijk – Making the Heavens Speak (Den Himmel zum Sprechen bringen) (October 26, Germany)
* Mary Trump – Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man (August 11)
* Debora MacKenzie - COVID-19: The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened, and How to Stop the Next One (June 30)
* Joseph M. Reagle Jr. and Jackie Koerner - Wikipedia @ 20: Stories of an Incomplete Revolution
* Xiaowei Wang - Blockchain Chicken Farm

### Biography and memoirs

* Lee Lawrence – The Louder I Will Sing (September 17, UK)

## Films

* The Witches

## Deaths

Notable literary deaths in 2020, sorted by date of death :
| Date | Individual | Background | Age | Cause of death |
| January 5 | Sylvia Jukes Morris | British biographer | 84 | |
| January 7 | Elizabeth Wurtzel | American author (Prozac Nation) | 52 | Leptomeningeal disease as a complication of metastasized breast cancer |
| January 9 | Chukwuemeka Ike | Nigerian writer | 88 | |
| January 12 | Sir Roger Scruton | English philosopher and writer | 75 | Cancer |
| January 16 | Christopher Tolkien | British academic and editor, son of J. R. R. Tolkien | 95 | |
| January 17 | Charles Carrère | Senegalese poet | 91 | |
| January 23 | Armando Uribe | Chilean writer, National Prize for Literature winner (2004) | 86 | |
| January 30 | Jörn Donner | Finnish writer | 86 | Lung disease |
| January 31 | Mary Higgins Clark | American best-selling author of suspense novels | 92 | |
| February 3 | George Steiner, FBA | Frenco-American literary critic and essayist (After Babel) | 90 | |
| February 4 | Kamau Brathwaite | Barbadian poet and academic | 89 | |
| February 4 | Alice Mayhew | American editor | 87 | |
| February 12 | Christie Blatchford | Canadian newspaper columnist, writer and broadcaster | 68 | Cancer |
| February 17 | Charles Portis | American author (True Grit, Gringos) | 86 | Alzheimer's disease |
| February 21 | Lisel Mueller | German-American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet | 96 | |
| February 22 | Kiki Dimoula | Greek poet | 88 | |
| February 24 | Clive Cussler | American adventure novelist (Raise the Titanic!) and founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA) | 88 | |
| February 25 | Grace F. Edwards | American novelist and director of the Harlem Writers Guild | 87 | |
| March 2 | Barbara Neely | African-American myster writer | 78 | |
| March 13 | Yang Mu | Taiwanese poet and essayist | 79 | |
| March 22 | Richard Marek | American editor | 86 | Esophageal cancer |
| March 24 | Terrence McNally | American playwright, and librettist | 81 | COVID-19 |
| March 30 | Tomie dePaola | American author and illustrator | 86 | Complications from surgery |
| April 1 | Bruce Dawe | Australian poet | 90 | |
| April 2 | Patricia Bosworth | American biographer, and memoirist | 86 | COVID-19 |
| April 6 | Jean Little | Canadian children's fiction author | 88 | |
| April 15 | Rubem Fonseca | Brazilian writer | 94 | |
| April 16 | Luis Sepúlveda | Chilean author and journalist | 70 | COVID-19 |
| April 25 | Per Olov Enquist | Swedish author (The Visit of the Royal Physician) | 85 | Cancer |
| April 27 | Eavan Boland | Irish poet | 75 | Stroke |
| April 29 | Yahya Hassan | Danish poet and political activist | 24 | |
| April 29 | Maj Sjowall | Swedish crime writer | 84 | |
| May 4 | Michael McClure | American beat poet, playwright, and songwriter, who read at the Six Gallery reading | 87 | Complications from a stroke |
| May 12 | Carolyn Reidy | American publisher and head of Simon & Schuster | 71 | Heart attack |
| May 27 | Larry Kramer | American playwright (The Normal Heart) and LGBT rights activist | 84 | Pneumonia |
| June 2 | Hiber Conteris | Uruguayan literary critic | 86 | |
| June 3 | Bruce Jay Friedman | American humorist, novelist, and playwright | 90 | |
| June 13 | Jean Raspail | French author (The Camp of the Saints) | 94 | |
| June 19 | Carlos Ruiz Zafón | Spanish author (The Shadow of the Wind) | 55 | Colorectal cancer |
| June 28 | Rudolfo Anaya | American author (Bless Me, Ultima), founder of Chicano literature | 82 | |
| July 7 | Elizabeth Harrower | Australian novelist | 92 | |
| July 8 | Brad Watson | American author | 64 | |
| July 12 | Joanna Cole | American author (The Magic School Bus) | 75 | Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis |
| August 3 | Shirley Ann Grau | American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer (The Keepers of the House) | 91 | Complications from a Stroke |
| August 5 | Eric Bentley | American theater critic | 103 | |
| August 5 | Pete Hamill | American journalist and author | 85 | Heart and kidney failure |
| August 10 | Jacobo Langsner | Uruguayan screenwriter and playwright | 93 | |
| August 24 | Gail Sheehy | American journalist and author (Hillary's Choice) | 83 | Complications of pneumonia |
| August 28 | Randall Kenan | American short story writer and author | 57 | |
| September 1 | Shanna Hogan | American true crime writer | 37 | Home accident |
| September 2 | David Graeber | American anthropologist, activist, social critic, and author (Debt: The First 5000 Years) | 59 | Necrotic pancreatitis |
| September 12 | Florence Howe | American author, publisher, literary scholar, and historian, founder of Feminist Press | 91 | Complications from Parkinson's disease |
| September 14 | Anne Stevenson | British-American poet and author | 87 | Heart failure |
| September 16 | Stanley Crouch | American jazz critic, playwright, novelist, public intellectual, and essayist | 74 | COVID-19 |
| September 17 | Terry Goodkind | American science-fiction and fantasy writer | 72 | |
| September 17 | Winston Groom | American author (Forrest Gump) | 77 | Heart attack |
| September 23 | Sir Harold Evans | British-American journalist and author (The American Century) | 92 | Congestive heart failure |
| September 23 | Emyr Humphreys | Welsh-language writer | 101 | |
| October 1 | Derek Mahon | Irish poet and journalist | 78 | |
| October 5 | Ruth Klüger | Austrian-American author and academic | 88 | |
| October 25 | Diane Di Prima | American poet | 86 | |
| October 26 | Daniel Menaker | American editor at Random House and The New Yorker | 79 | Pancreatic cancer |
| October 27 | Julia O'Faolain | Irish writer | 88 | |
| October 31 | Joan Bingham | American co-founder and executive director of Grove Atlantic | 85 | Pneumonia |
| November 4 | Naomi Long Madgett | American poet laureate, founder of Lotus Press, and “the godmother of African-American poetry” | 97 | |
| November 6 | Luke Rhinehart | American novelist, screenwriter, and nonfiction writer | 87 | |
| November 6 | Natan Zach | Israeli poet | 89 | Complications of Alzheimer's disease |
| November 6 | Mikhail Zhvanetsky | Soviet and Russian writer and satirist | 86 | |
| November 9 | Joan Drury | American writer, publisher, and indie bookseller | 75 | |
| November 20 | Jan Morris | British journalist | 94 | |
| November 29 | Ben Bova | American science fiction writer and magazine editor (Analog) | 88 | COVID-19-related pneumonia and a stroke |
| December 1 | Miguel Algarín | Puerto Rican poet and founder of Nuyorican Poets Café | 79 | Sepsis |
| December 3 | Alison Lurie | American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (Foreign Affairs) | 94 | |
| December 8 | Anthony Veasna So | American short story writer | 28 | Accidental drug overdose |
| December 12 | John le Carré | English author (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) | 89 | Complications from a fall |

## Awards

The following list is arranged alphabetically:
* Akutagawa Prize: Haneko Takayama, Shuri no Uma (首里の馬)
* Anisfield-Wolf Book Award: Namwali Serpell, The Old Drift
* Baillie Gifford Prize:
* Booker Prize: Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain
* Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year: A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in Eastern Indonesian Society by Gregory Forth.
* Caine Prize for African Writing: Irenosen Okojie, "Grace Jones"
* Camões Prize: Vítor Manuel de Aguiar e Silva
* Carnegie Medal: Anthony McGowan, Lark
* Costa Book Awards: Monique Roffey, The Mermaid of Black Conch (novel prize and overall Book of the Year)
* Danuta Gleed Literary Award: Zalika Reid-Benta, Frying Plantain
* David Cohen Prize: not awarded this year
* Desmond Elliott Prize: Derek Owusu, That Reminds Me
* Dylan Thomas Prize: Bryan Washington, Lot
* Edgar Award
* European Book Prize: Pavol Rankov, Stalo sa prvého septembra (alebo inokedy) and Kapka Kassabova, Border: a journey to the edge of Europe
* Folio Prize: Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive
* German Book Prize: Anne Weber, Annette, ein Heldinnenepos
* Goldsmiths Prize: M. John Harrison, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again
* Gordon Burn Prize: Peter Pomerantsev, This Is Not Propaganda
* Governor General's Award for English-language fiction: Michelle Good, Five Little Indians
* Governor General's Award for French-language fiction: Sophie Létourneau, Chasse à l'homme
* Governor General's Awards, other categories: See 2020 Governor General's Awards
* Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française: Étienne de Montety, La grande épreuve
* Hugo Award for Best Novel: Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire
* International Booker Prize: Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, The Discomfort of Evening translated by Michele Hutchison
* International Dublin Literary Award: Anna Burns, Milkman
* International Prize for Arabic Fiction: Abdelouahab Aissaoui, The Spartan Court
* James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction:
* James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography:
* Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award: Edna O'Brien, Girl (Faber and Faber)
* Lambda Literary Awards: Multiple categories; see 32nd Lambda Literary Awards.
* Legion of Honour, Chevalier:
* Miguel de Cervantes Prize: Francisco Brines
* Miles Franklin Award: Tara June Winch, The Yield
* National Biography Award:
* National Book Award for Fiction: Charles Yu, Interior Chinatown
* National Book Critics Circle Award:
* Newbery Medal: Jerry Craft, New Kid
* Nike Award: Joanna Gierak-Onoszko: 27 śmierci Toby'ego Obeda
* Nobel Prize in Literature: Louise Glück
* PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction: Chloe Aridjis, Sea Monsters
* PEN Center USA Fiction Award:
* Premio Planeta de Novela:
* Premio Strega: Sandro Veronesi, Il colibrì
* Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing: David M. Glantz
* Prix Goncourt: Hervé Le Tellier, L'anomalie
* Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Colson Whitehead The Nickel Boys
* Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Jericho Brown The Tradition
* Queen's Birthday Honours (UK)
* RBC Taylor Prize: Mark Bourrie, Bush Runner
* Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize: Gil Adamson, Ridgerunner
* Russian Booker Prize:
* SAARC Literary Award:
* Scotiabank Giller Prize: Souvankham Thammavongsa, How to Pronounce Knife
* Golden Wreath of Struga Poetry Evenings: Amir Or
* Walter Scott Prize: Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Narrow Land
* Whiting Awards:
** Drama: Will Arbery
** Fiction: Andrea Lawlor, Ling Ma, and Genevieve Sly Crane
** Nonfiction: Jaquira Díaz and Jia Tolentino
** Poetry: Aria Aber, Dianely Antigua, Jake Skeets, and Genya Turovskaya
* Women's Prize for Fiction: Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet
* W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction: Ralph Peterson, Darkness at Chancellorsville
* Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award: Durs Grünbein