See also: 1970 in literature, other events of 1971, 1972 in literature, list of years in literature.
Events
New books
Births
Deaths
- March 5 - Allan Nevins, journalist
- March 7 - Stevie Smith, poet
- April 10 - André Billy, French author
- May 19 - Ogden Nash, poet and humorist
- May 20 - Waldo Williams, Welsh language poet
- June 1 - Reinhold Niebuhr, theologian
- June 4 - Georg Lukács, philosopher and critic
- June 6 - Edward Andrade, poet and physicist
- July 4 - August Derleth, anthologist
- July 7 - Claude Gauvreau, poet and dramatist
- August 30 - Peter Fleming, travel writer and brother of Ian Fleming
- October 25 - Philip Gordon Wylie, novelist
- December 25 - S. Foster Damon, critic and poet
- date unknown - Clifford Dyment, poet
- date unknown - St. John Greer Ervine, dramatist
- date unknown - Jacques Lusseyran, blind author
Awards
- Akutagawa Prize: Azuma Mineo, Okinawan Boy
- Booker Prize: V. S. Naipaul, In a Free State
- See 1971 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
- Hugo Award: Larry Niven, Ringworld
- Nebula Award: Robert Silverberg, A Time of Changes
- Newbery Medal for children's literature: Betsy Bears, Summer of the Swans
- Nobel Prize for Literature: Pablo Neruda
- Prix Goncourt: Jacques Laurent, Les Bętises
- Prix Médicis: Pascal Lainé, L'Irrévolution
- Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Paul Zindel, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: no award given
- Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: William S. Merwin, The Carrier of Ladders
- Viareggio Prize: Ugo Attardi, L'erede selvaggio
