photo: Michael Simon

Poet, essayist, and novelist Ishmael Reed was born in 1938 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was raised in Buffalo, New York, and attended the University of New York at Buffalo. He is the author of five collections of poetry: New and Collected Poems (Atheneum, 1988), A Secretary to the Spirits (1978), Catechism of D Neoamerican HooDoo Church (1970), Chattanooga (1973), and Conjure (1972). Reed has also written nine novels including Japanese by Spring (1993), The Terrible Twos (1982), Flight to Canada (1976), The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974), Yellow Back Radio Broke Down (1969), and The Free-Lance Pallbearers. Among his plays are Mother Hubbard (1982) and The Ace Boons (1980). He is also the author of four collections of essays: Airing Dirty Laundry (1993), Writin' is Fightin': Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper (1988), God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays (1982), and Shrovetide in Old New Orleans (1978). Reed was a cofounder of Yardbird Publishing Co. in 1971 and also founded Reed, Cannon, and Johnson Communications in 1973. With Al Young, he co founded Quilt magazine. Reed has also edited a number of anthologies. Among his honors and awards are the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Foundation Award, the Lewis Michaux Award, an American Civil Liberties award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the California Arts Council. Reed has lectured at numerous colleges and universities. For the past twenty years, he has been a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. Ishmael Reed lives in Oakland, California.