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