Reed, Ishmael Scott,
1938- , African-American novelist, poet, and social
critic, b. Chattanooga, Tn. When he was a child, Reed’s family moved
to Buffalo, N.Y., where he attended the Univ. of Buffalo, but had to
withdraw in his junior year due to lack of funds. (The university awarded
him an honorary doctorate in 1995). He moved to New York City in 1962, where
he cofounded the counterculture newspaper, The East Village
Other, and joined a collective of young black writers called
the Umbra Workshop. While living in New York City, he was a leader in the
movement to promote black artists’ works, as well as connecting with
other poets and progressive jazz musicians, including Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor,
and Albert Ayler. In 1970, he joined the faculty of the Univ. of California,
Berkeley, teaching there for 35 years. He has authored 12 novels, seven
collections of poetry, 11 collections of essays, two books of travel essays,
and nine plays, as well as editing 14 anthologies. His poetry collection,
Conjure (1972), was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and
a National Book Award, and his novel, Mumbo Jumbo (1972),
also was nominated for a National Book Award, all in 1973. In 1998, he was
awarded a “genius” grant by the MacArthur Foundation. He has
also won numerous other honorary degrees and awards, including fellowships
from the Guggenheim Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. In 1976,
he was a founder of the nonprofit Before Columbus Foundation, which promotes
multiracial literature.
See his novel The Freelance Pallbearers (1967); collected poems
(2007, 2021); collected plays (2004), The Haunting of Lin-Manuel
Miranda (2019); anthologies edited by (1970, 2003); interviews
with (1995; B. Dick and A. Singh, eds.); studies by R. Martin (1988), P.
McGee (1997), J. Ebbeson (2006), F. Sirmans, ed. (2008), S. Ludwig, ed.
(2012).
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