1945 in literature

See also: 1944 in literature, other events of 1945, 1946 in literature, list of years in literature.

Events

• November 1 – Ebony Magazine is published for the first time.
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is published.
• Loving by Henry Green is published.

New books

• The Age of Jackson – Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
• The Age of Reason – Jean-Paul Sartre
• Animal Farm – George Orwell
• Black Boy – Richard Wright
• The Black Rose – Thomas B. Costain
• Bonheur d'occasion (The Tin Flute) – Gabrielle Roy
• The Bosnian Trilogy – Ivo Andric
• Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
• By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept – Elizabeth Smart
• Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
• Caucasian Chalk Circle – Bertolt Brecht
• The Egyptian – Mika Waltari
• Gigi – Colette
• High Ground – Odella Phelps Wood
• Loving – Henry Green
• Night Has a Thousand Eyes – Cornell Woolrich
• The Naked and the Dead – Norman Mailer
• The Open Society and Its Enemies – Karl Popper
• The Policy King – Lewis A. H. Caldwell
• The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
• Rabbit Hill – Robert Lawson
• A Street in Bronzeville – Gwendolyn Brooks
• Stuart Little – E.B. White
• Surrender on Demand – Varian Fry
• That Hideous Strength – C. S. Lewis
• Tootle – Gertrude Crampton
• Two Solitudes – Hugh MacLennan
• The Wide House – Taylor Caldwell

Births

• January 30 – Michael Dorris, author (+ 1997)
• April 27 – August Wilson, playwright
• April 30 – Annie Dillard
• July 9 – Dean R. Koontz, novelist
• Raymond E. Feist, American fantasy author

Deaths

• January 22 – Else Lasker-Schuler, poet (* 1869)
• March 12 – Anne Frank, author of The Diary of Anne Frank, at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
• April 9 – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian (* 1906, murdered by German Nationalsozialists)
• May 15 – Charles Williams, British author
• August 26 – Franz Werfel, Czech writer
• December 4 – Arthur Morrison, writer
• December 28 – Theodore Dreiser, author

Awards

• Newbery Medal for children's literature: Robert Lawson, Rabbit Hill
• Nobel Prize for literature: Gabriela Mistral
• Pulitzer Prize for Drama: Mary Chase, Harvey
• Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: Karl Shapiro, V-Letter and Other Poems
• Pulitzer Prize for the Novel: John Hersey, A Bell for Adano