1997 in literature

• February 20 – Allen Ginsberg makes a final public appearance at the NYU Poetry Slam.^[1] He continues to write through his final illness, his last poem being "Things I'll Not Do (Nostalgias)" written on March 30.^[2]
• May 27 – Shakespeare's Globe in London, a reconstruction of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre, opens with a production of Shakespeare's Henry V.
• June 3 – The supposed climax of Max Beerbohm's 1916 short story Enoch Soames occurs at the old British Museum Reading Room in London.
• June 26 – J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is published in London by Bloomsbury Publishing, in an edition of 500 copies.
• July 13 – The release occurs in Ireland of the film of Patrick McCabe's 1992 novel The Butcher Boy. The author plays Jimmy The Skite, the town drunk.
• September 1 – The Adventures of Captain Underpants, the first in Dav Pilkey's series of children's novels, is published by Scholastic in the United States.
• October – The online literary magazine Jacket is founded.
• November 24 – The new British Library building in London designed by Colin St John Wilson opens to readers.
• December 30 – The memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is removed from the ninth-grade English curriculum in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, for portraying "white people as being horrible, nasty, stupid people".^[3]

Uncertain dates

• Tom Clancy signs a deal with Pearson Custom Publishing and Penguin Putnam Inc. giving him US $50 million for the world English rights to two new books. A second agreement pays another $25 million for a four-year book/multimedia deal, and a third, with Berkley Books for 24 paperbacks to tie in with an ABC television miniseries for $22 million.
• Janet Dailey admits to plagiarism of the novels of the fellow American bestselling romance writer Nora Roberts.^[4][5]

• Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman – So Vile a Sin
• Mitch Albom – Tuesdays With Morrie
• Martin Amis – Night Train
• Iain Banks – A Song of Stone
• John Banville – The Untouchable
• Hazel Barnes – The Story I Tell Myself
• Marie Bashkirtseff (died 1884) – I Am the Most Interesting Book of All (translation)
• Raymond Benson
  • Tomorrow Never Dies
  • Zero Minus Ten
• Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman – Vampire Science
• Roberto Bolaño – Last Evenings on Earth (Llamadas Telefonicas)
• Pascal Bruckner – Les Voleurs de beauté
• Simon Bucher-Jones – Ghost Devices
• Christopher Bulis – A Device of Death
• Tim Burton – The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories
• Candace Bushnell – Sex and the City
• Peter Carey – Jack Maggs
• Caleb Carr – The Angel of Darkness
• Agatha Christie (died 1976) – collected short stories
  • The Harlequin Tea Set
  • While the Light Lasts and Other Stories
• Daniel Clowes – Ghost World (graphic novel)
• Warwick Collins – Gents
• Bernard Cornwell
  • Sharpe's Tiger
  • Excalibur: A Novel of Arthur
• Patricia Cornwell
  • Hornet's Nest
  • Unnatural Exposure
• Paul Cornell – Oh No It Isn't!
• Jim Crace – Quarantine
• Robert Crais – Indigo Slam
• Ann C. Crispin
  • The Hutt Gambit
  • The Paradise Snare
• 'Misha Defonseca' – Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years (published as non-fiction)
• Don DeLillo – Underworld
• Anita Diamant – The Red Tent
• Terrance Dicks
  • The Eight Doctors
  • Mean Streets
• Fernanda Eberstadt – When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth
• Bernardine Evaristo – Lara
• Charles Frazier – Cold Mountain
• Anthony Frewin – London Blues
• Anastasia Gosteva – Дочь самурая (The Samurai's Daughter)
• John Grisham – The Partner
• Barbara Hambly – Planet of Twilight
• Allison Hedge Coke – Dog Road Woman
• Matt Jones – Beyond the Sun
• Sebastian Junger – The Perfect Storm
• Winona LaDuke – Last Standing Woman
• Joe R. Lansdale – Bad Chili
• Paul Leonard – Genocide
• Melissa Lucashenko – Steam Pigs
• Ann-Marie MacDonald – Fall on Your Knees
• Bernard MacLaverty – Grace Notes
• Ian R. MacLeod – Voyages by Starlight
• Norman Mailer – The Gospel According to the Son
• Ian McEwan – Enduring Love
• David A. McIntee – The Dark Path
• Lawrence Miles
  • Down
• Mark Morris – The Bodysnatchers
• Toni Morrison – Paradise
• Jim Mortimore – Eternity Weeps
• Herta Müller – The Appointment
• Ryū Murakami (村上 龍) – In the Miso Soup (イン ザ・ミソスープ, English translation 2005)
• Courttia Newland – The Scholar
• Kate Orman – The Room with No Doors
• Hanne Ørstavik – Kjærlighet (Love)
• Lance Parkin – The Dying Days
• James Patterson – Cat and Mouse
• Cyril Pearl – Morisson of Peking
• John Peel – War of the Daleks
• Pepetela – A Gloriosa Família
• Marc Platt – Lungbarrow
• Terry Pratchett – Jingo
• Annie Proulx – "Brokeback Mountain" (short story)
• Thomas Pynchon – Mason & Dixon
• Kathy Reichs – Déjà Dead
• Nina Revoyr – The Necessary Hunger
• Justin Richards – Dragons' Wrath
• Mordecai Richler – Barney's Version
• Gareth Roberts – The Well-Mannered War
• Philip Roth – American Pastoral
• Arundhati Roy – The God of Small Things
• Don Miguel Ruiz – The Four Agreements
• Gary Russell
  • Deadfall
  • Instruments of Darkness
• Will Self – Great Apes
• Carol Shields – Larry's Party^[6]
• Sidney Sheldon – The Best Laid Plans
• Michael Stackpole – The Bacta War
• Danielle Steel
  • The Ghost
  • The Ranch
  • Special Delivery
• Dave Stone
  • Burning Heart
  • Ship of Fools
• William Sutcliffe – Are You Experienced?
• Antonio Tabucchi – The Missing Head of Damasceno Monteiro (La testa perduta di Damasceno Monteiro)
• Kaoru Takamura – Redi joka (レディ・ジョーカー, Lady Joker) (book publication completed)
• Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now
• Zlatko Topčić – Nightmare
• Kurt Vonnegut – Timequake
• Lulu Wang – Het Lelietheater (The Lily Theatre)
• Niall Williams – Four Letters of Love
• Connie Willis – To Say Nothing of the Dog
• Timothy Zahn – Specter of the Past
• Roger Zelazny and Jane Lindskold – Donnerjack

• Lloyd Alexander – The Iron Ring^[7]
• Lynne Reid Banks – Harry the Poisonous Centipede: A Story to Make You Squirm (first in the Harry the Poisonous Centipede trilogy)
• 'Asta Bowen – Wolf: A Journey Home
• Nancy Butts - The Door in the Lake
• Cao Wenxuan (曹文軒) – The Grass House (草房子)
• Sarah Ferguson – Budgie the Little Helicopter (first in an eponymous series of 5 books)
• Mem Fox – Whoever You Are
• Cornelia Funke – Dragon Rider
• Virginia Hamilton (with Barry Moser) – A Ring of Tricksters: Animal Tales from America, the West Indies, and Africa
• Mark Helprin (with Chris Van Allsburg) – The Veil of Snows
• William Mayne – Lady Muck (illustrated by Jonathan Heale)
• Eloise Jarvis McGraw – The Moorchild
• Junko Morimoto – The Two Bullies
• Barbara Nichol (with Barry Moser) – Dippers
• Mary Pope Osborne (with Ned Bittinger) – Rocking Horse Christmas
• Dav Pilkey – The Adventures of Captain Underpants^[8] (first in the Captain Underpants series of 12 books)
• Philip Pullman – The Subtle Knife^[9]
• Rick Riordan – Big Red Tequila
• J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone^[10] (first book in the Harry Potter series)
• Ron Roy – The Absent Author (first in the A to Z Mysteries series of 26 books)
• Simms Taback – There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly
• Vivian Walsh – Olive, the Other Reindeer
• Jacqueline Wilson – Girls in Love^[11]

• Jon Fosse – Nightsongs
• Lee Hall – Spoonface Steinberg (radio monologue)
• Moisés Kaufman – Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde
• Thomas Kilroy – The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde
• Conor McPherson – The Weir
• Patrick Marber – Closer
• Richard Nelson – Goodnight Children Everywhere
• Peter Whelan – The Herbal Bed

• Ted Hughes – Tales from Ovid

• Dave Barry – Dave Barry's Book of Bad Songs
• Jean-Dominique Bauby – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le papillon)
• Cari Beauchamp – Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood
• Jan Bondeson – A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities
• Bill Bryson – A Walk in the Woods
• D. K. Chakrabarti – Colonial Indology : sociopolitics of the ancient Indian past
• Iris Chang – The Rape of Nanking
• Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs and Steel
• Jenny Diski – Skating to Antarctica
• Michael Drosnin – The Bible Code
• Gerina Dunwich – A Wiccan's Guide to Prophecy and Divination
• Geoff Dyer – Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D. H. Lawrence
• Timothy Ferris – The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report
• Benjamin Fondane (died 1944) – Le Voyageur n'a pas fini de voyager
• Stephen Fry – Moab Is My Washpot (autobiography)
• Charlotte Gray – Mrs. King
• Alan Guth – The Inflationary Universe
• Robert Hughes – American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America
• Jesse Lee Kercheval – Building Fiction
• Betty Kobayashi Issenman – Sinews of Survival
• Geneviève Lacambre – Gustave Moreau : Maître sorcier
• B. B. Lal – The Earliest civilization of South Asia: rise, maturity, and decline
• Peter Maas – Underboss
• Deborah Madison – Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
• James McBride – The Color of Water
• Adele Morales – The Last Party: Scenes From My Life with Norman Mailer
• Penguin Random House – Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary
• E. Wayne Ross – The Social Studies Curriculum
• Ian Smith – The Great Betrayal
• Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont – Fashionable Nonsense
• Maria Todorova – Imagining the Balkans
• Larry Trask – The Penguin Guide to Punctuation
• Kevin Warwick – March of the Machines^[12]
• Thierry Zéphir – Khmer: The Lost Empire of Cambodia^[13]

• February 12 – Alexander Nikolov, Bulgarian poet
• June 22 – Aqiil Gopee, Mauritian writer and poet
• November 28 – Franz Mherryon Robles, Filipino novelist and aphorist

• January 19 – James Dickey, American poet and novelist (born 1923)^[14]
• February 3 – Bohumil Hrabal, Czech novelist (born 1914)
• February 18 – Emily Hahn, American journalist and author (born 1905)
• March 21 - Wilbert Awdry, British Anglican reverend and author (born 1911)
• April 5 – Allen Ginsberg, American poet (liver cancer, born 1926)^[1]
• May 9 – Rina Lasnier, Canadian poet (born 1915)
• May 23 – Alison Adburgham, English social historian and journalist (born 1912)
• June 8 – George Turner, Australian novelist and critic (born 1916)
• June 11 – Susanna Roth, Swiss bohemist and literary translator (born 1950)
• July 26 – Joseph Henry Reason, American librarian (born 1905)^[15]
• August 2 – William S. Burroughs, American novelist (born 1914^[16]
• August 16 – Gerard McLarnon, Irish actor and playwright (born 1915)
• August 27 – Johannes Edfelt, Swedish poet, translator and critic (born 1904)
• October 14 – Harold Robbins, American novelist (born 1916)
• October 16 – James A. Michener, American novelist and historian (born 1907)
• November 6 – Leon Forrest, African American novelist and essayist (cancer, born 1937)^[17]
• November 30 – Kathy Acker, American novelist and poet (breast cancer, born 1947)^[18]
• December 14 – Owen Barfield, British philosopher, author and poet (born 1898)