Home
Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, songwriter, public media commentator, lecturer and publisher. Author of more than forty books, to commemorate its 50 years in print, in 2022 Scribner released a new edition of his third novel, Mumbo Jumbo, including a new introduction by Reed. Mumbo Jumbo has been cited by Harold Bloom as one of 500 great books of the Western Canon, which Henry Louis Gates, Jr. says “would be among my top 10 books of all time.” In 2026, Scribner will also celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Reed’s fifth novel, Flight to Canada, with a new edition.
The Terrible Fours, the third novel in Reed’s “Terribles” series, was published by Baraka Books of Montreal in 2021; in 2026 Baraka Books will publish the next novel in this series, The Terrible Fives. Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues, his most recent poetry collection, was published in 2020 by Dalkey Archive Press, which published his eleventh novel, Conjugating Hindi, in 2018. Also in 2020, his latest non-fiction work, Malcolm and Me, was published by Audible, with Reed as narrator; Audible published Reed’s short story, The Fool Who Thought Too Much, in 2020 and released a novella, The Man Who Was Not Himself, in 2022. Baraka Books published Reed’s latest essay collection, Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, in 2019, and The Complete Muhammad Ali in 2015. Reed's writing has been translated into Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Hebrew, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
Reed’s newest play, The Amanuensis, will receive a staged reading at San Francisco's Theater 33 from October 16-19, 2025. The Shine Challenge 2025, premiered in a full production at Off Broadway’s Theater for the New City, January 30, 2025. Theater for the New City also premiered his eleventh play, The Conductor, on March 9, 2023, and his tenth play, The Slave Who Loved Caviar (Archway Editions, 2023), in December 2021. New York’s Nuyorican Poets Café premiered his ninth play, The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda (Archway Editions, 2020), on May 23, 2019, which garnered three 2019 AUDELCO awards; his eighth play, Life Among the Aryans (Archway Editions, 2022), premiered at the Nuyorican in 2018.
Reed is the founder of the Before Columbus Foundation and PEN Oakland, non-profit organizations run by writers for writers. Recipient of the 2023 Hurston/Wright Foundation’s North Star Merit Award and the Anisfield-Wolf 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, he is a MacArthur Fellow, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Awardee, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and one of a handful of authors who were nominated for the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize in the same year. Reed's other honors include the University of California’s Distinguished Emeritus Awardee for the year 2020 and the University of Buffalo’s 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award.
Awarded the 2008 Blues Songwriter of the Year from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, his many years of collaborations with jazz composers, musicians and vocalists were also recognized by SFJazz Center with his appointment, from 2012-2016, as San Francisco’s first Jazz Poet Laureate and in Venice, Italy, where he became the first Alberto Dubito International awardee, honored as “a special artistic individual who has distinguished himself through the most innovative creativity in the musical and linguistic languages.” The Hands of Grace, a CD of his compositions, with Reed performing on piano, was released in Fall 2022 by the ReadingGroup. Blues Lyrics by Ishmael Reed (Konch Records, 2023) features Reed as vocalist with the West Coast Blues Caravan of All Stars and David Murray. His online international literary magazine, Konch, can be found at www.ishmaelreedpub.com.
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1938, Reed grew up in Buffalo, New York, and now makes his home in Oakland, California. His archives are housed at the University of Delaware, in Newark, Delaware.