This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1983.

This article needs additional citations for verification. (April 2020)

• April – The Russian samizdat poet Irina Ratushinskaya is sentenced to imprisonment in a labor camp for dissident activity. While there she continues to write poetry clandestinely.^[1]
• June 2 – The Francophone Senegalese poet and politician Léopold Sédar Senghor becomes the first black African writer elected as a member of the Académie française.
• July – Barbara Cartland, who reaches the age of 82, writes 23 romantic novels this year.
• November – Bruce Bethke's short story "Cyberpunk", written in 1980, is published in Amazing Stories magazine in the United States, giving a name to the science fiction subgenre of cyberpunk.
• unknown date – Salvage for the Saint by Peter Bloxsom and John Kruse is published, as the final book in a series of novels, novellas and short stories featuring the Leslie Charteris creation "The Saint", which started in 1928. (An attempt to revive the series in 1997 is unsuccessful.)

• November 17 – Christopher Paolini, American fantasy novelist^[4]
• December 6 – Jason Reynolds, African American children's novelist and poet^[5]
• unknown date – Sarah Howe, Hong Kong-born poet writing in English^[6]

• January 5 – Chapman Grant, American historian and publisher (born 1887)
• February 14 – Brita von Horn, Swedish theater director, dramatist and novelist (born 1886)
• February 25 – Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams III), American playwright (born 1911)
• March 3 – Hergé (Georges Prosper Remi), Belgian comics creator (born 1907)
• March 15 – Dame Rebecca West, British writer (born 1892)
• April 12 – Desmond Bagley, English novelist (complications from stroke, born 1923))
• May 4 – Shūji Terayama (寺山 修司), Japanese poet, dramatist, and film director (cirrhosis, born 1935)
• May 21 – Amal Abul-Qassem Donqol, Egyptian poet (born 1940)
• June 19 – Vilmundur Gylfason, Icelandic historian, poet and politician (suicide, born 1948)
• June 27 – Alden Nowlan, Canadian poet, novelist and playwright (born 1933)
• August 12 – Mikey Smith, Jamaican dub poet (stoned to death; born 1954)
• August 18 – Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, German-born British art historian (born 1902)
• September 16 – Roy Andries De Groot, English-born American food writer (born 1910)
• December 5 – John Robinson, English religious writer and bishop (born 1919)

• Nobel Prize for Literature: William Golding^[7]