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I am looking for an expression (also an idiomatic one) which describes a single famous event such as:
a singer who has just one most famous song and than you hear no more about them.
a writer who writes just one very popular book (Harper Lee comes to mind) but after that nothing for decades.
Is there an expression for these persons or this kind of events?
One hit wonder comes to mind. Here's the wikipedia link.
The term one-hit wonder is most often used to describe music performers with only one top-40 hit single that overshadows their other work.
However, the term is used as well to describe other, related phenomena such as a software company which only has one widely successful release, or for an athlete, known for only one major career event.
Briefly successful or popular: At first, some of the major record labels thought rock ’n’ roll was just a flash in the pan.
Usage notes: sometimes used in the form no flash in the pan (successful or popular for more than a brief period): This trend is no flash in the pan.
In the event that the 'famous event' has lasting impact (e.g. Harper Lee - To Kill a Mocking Bird, Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things, Bill Hailey - Rock Around The Clock, ...), the OP's own term - one-off - fits. So too, perhaps, extraordinary and one-of-a-kind.
If the famous event is forgotten then
A one-day wonder
Someone or something that causes interest or excitement for a short period but is then quickly forgotten. Curiously, also found as A seven-day wonder and A nine-day wonder.
The singer or the one-book writer (but not Harper Lee, as I explain below) has shot his bolt or has shot his wad, defined in The Free Dictionary:
Do all within one's power; exhaust one's resources or capabilities. For example, They were asking for more ideas but Bob had shot his bolt and couldn't come up with any, or Don't shoot your wad with that article or you won't have any material for the sequels. The first expression comes from archery and referred to using up all of one's bolts (short, heavy arrows fired with a crossbow); it was a proverb by the 1200s. The colloquial variant, dating from about 1900, comes from gambling and refers to spending all of a wad of rolled-up banknotes.
For Harper Lee, neither fits, in my opinion, because her first bolt hit the center of the target and when she bet her wad, she hit the jackpot. For Harper Lee, she said what she had to say. This is a slight variant on Henry David Thoreau:
Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.
