The year 1965 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Frank Herbert's Dune wins the first ever Nebula Award

New books

• Lloyd Alexander - The Black Cauldron
• J. G. Ballard - The Drought
• Ray Bradbury - The Vintage Bradbury
• John Brunner
  • The Martian Sphinx as Keith Woodcott
  • The Squares of the City
• Kenneth Bulmer - Land Beyond the Map
• Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Castaways
• L. Sprague de Camp - The Arrows of Hercules
• L. Sprague de Camp, editor - The Spell of Seven
• August Derleth - The Casebook of Solar Pons
• Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
• Margaret Drabble - The Millstone
• Ian Fleming - The Man with the Golden Gun
• Margaret Forster - Georgy Girl
• Frank Herbert - Dune
• Arthur Hailey - Hotel
• Bel Kaufman - Up the Down Staircase
• Jerzy Kosinski - The Painted Bird
• John le Carré - The Looking-Glass War
• David Lodge - The British Museum Is Falling Down
• H. P. Lovecraft - Dagon and Other Macabre Tales
• Eric Malpass - Morning's at Seven
• Ruth Manning-Sanders - A Book of Dragons
• James A. Michener - The Source
• Iris Murdoch - The Red and the Green
• Peter O'Donnell - Modesty Blaise
• Raymond Queneau - Les fleurs bleues
• Françoise Sagan - La chamade
• Vincent Starrett - The Quick and the Dead
• Irving Stone - Those Who Love
• Rex Stout - The Doorbell Rang
• Jack Vance - Space Opera
• Kurt Vonnegut - God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
• Donald Wandrei - Strange Harvest
• John D. MacDonald - [A Deadly Shade of Gold]]

New drama

• Samuel Beckett - Come and Go
• Edward Bond - Saved
• John Osborne - A Patriot for Me
• Michel Tremblay - Les Belles-S?urs

Poetry

• Stanley McNail - Something Breathing
• Sylvia Plath - Ariel
• Clark Ashton Smith - Poems in Prose

Non-fiction

• Barney Glaser & Anselm Strauss - Awareness of Dying
• William Golding - The Hot Gates
• Alex Haley & Malcolm X - The Autobiography of Malcolm X
• H. P. Lovecraft - Selected Letters I (1911-1924)
• Truman Capote - In Cold Blood
• Robin Moore - The Green Berets

Births

• March 4 - Andrew Collins, journalist and scriptwriter
• March 30 - Piers Morgan, controversial journalist and editor
• July 31 - Joanne Rowling, author
• October 23 - Augusten Burroughs, memoirist
• November 11 - Thomas K. Ward, software project manager
• December 31 - Nicholas Sparks, novelist
• date unknown - Patience Agbabi, performance poet
• date unknown - Thomas Brussig, novelist
• September 21 - Robert Zilliox Network Management Systems

Deaths

• January 4 - T. S. Eliot, American/British poet
• January 12 - Lorraine Hansberry, writer
• May 3 - Howard Spring, novelist
• June 5 - Thornton Burgess, children's author
• July 9 - Jacques Audiberti
• July 31 - John Metcalfe UK writer
• August 17 - Jack Spicer, poet
• October 8 - Thomas B. Costain, popular historian
• October 15 - Randall Jarrell, poet
• November 8 - Dorothy Kilgallen, journalist
• November 20 - Katharine Anthony, biographer
• December 16 - William Somerset Maugham

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Awards

• Nobel Prize for literature - Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov

Canada

• See 1965 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.

France

• Prix Goncourt: J. Borel, L'Adoration
• Prix Médicis: René-Victor Pilhes, La Rhubarbe

United Kingdom

• Eric Gregory Award: John Fuller, Derek Mahon, Michael Longley, Norman Talbot
• Newdigate prize: Peter Jay
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction: Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate
• James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography: Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: The Later Years 1803-1850
• Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry: Philip Larkin

United States

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Criticism: Walter Lippmann
• Hugo Award: Fritz Leiber, The Wanderer
• Nebula Award: Frank Herbert, Dune
• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Maia Wojciechowska, Shadow of a Bull
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Frank D. Gilroy, The Subject Was Roses
• Pulitzer Prize for Fiction: Shirley Ann Grau - The Keepers Of The House
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Berryman: 77 Dream Songs

Elsewhere

• Premio Nadal: E. Cabalero Calderón, El buen salvaje
• Viareggio Prize: Goffredo Parise, Il Padrone (The Boss)

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