This article presents a list of the historical events and publications of Australian literature during 1969.
Major publications
Books
Mena Calthorpe – The Defectors
Jon Cleary – Remember Jack Hoxie
Dymphna Cusack – The Half-Burnt Tree
Sumner Locke Elliott – Edens Lost
George Johnston – Clean Straw for Nothing
Thomas Keneally – The Survivor
D'Arcy Niland – Dead Men Running
Short stories
Manning Clark – Disquiet and Other Stories
Lyndall Hadow – Full Cycle and Other Stories
T. A. G. Hungerford – "Wong Chu and the Queen's Letterbox" Frank Moorhouse – Futility and Other Animals Dal Stivens – Selected Stories 1936-1968
Children's and young adult fiction
Hesba Brinsmead – Isle of the Sea Horse
Joan Phipson – Peter and Butch
Ivan Southall – Finn's Folly
Eleanor Spence – Jamberoo Road
Colin Thiele – Blue Fin
Poetry
Bruce Beaver – Letters to Live Poets
Gwen Harwood
"Barn Owl" "Father and Child" A. D. Hope – New Poems 1956-1969 James McAuley – Surprises of the Sun David Malouf – "The Year of the Foxes" Les Murray – The Weatherboard Cathedral Thomas Shapcott – Inwards to the Sun : Poems Randolph Stow – A Counterfeit Silence: Selected Poems
Plays
Dorothy Hewett - Mrs Porter and the Angel
Awards and honours
Literary
Children and young adult
Poetry
Births
A list, ordered by date of birth (and, if the date is either unspecified or repeated, ordered alphabetically by surname) of births in 1969 of Australian literary figures, authors of written works or literature-related individuals follows, including year of death.
1 April – Larissa Behrendt, novelist and academic
23 October – Trudi Canavan, novelist
Unknown date
Tegan Bennett Daylight, novelist
Deaths
A list, ordered by date of death (and, if the date is either unspecified or repeated, ordered alphabetically by surname) of deaths in 1969 of Australian literary figures, authors of written works or literature-related individuals follows, including year of birth.
2 February — William Hatfield, novelist (born 1892) 8 July – Charmian Clift, novelist (born 1923) 12 July — Henry George Lamond, novelist (born 1885) 4 September – Emily Bulcock, poet and journalist (born 1877) 2 October – Katharine Susannah Prichard, novelist (born 1883) 11 October – Marie Bjelke Petersen, novelist (born 1874) 21 November – Norman Lindsay, novelist and artist (born 1879) 27 November – May Gibbs, writer for children (born 1877)
Unknown date
Kathleen Dalziel, poet (born 1881)