Introduction

Ishmael Reed

Ishmael Reed is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, songwriter, public media commentator, lecturer and publisher. Author of more than thirty books, Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues, his most recent poetry collection, was published in November 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 second audio book, a short story, The Fool Who Thought Too Much, in November 2020. Baraka Books of Montreal published Reed’s latest essay collection, Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, in 2019. New York’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe premiered his ninth and latest produced play, The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, May 23, 2019, which garnered three 2019 AUDELCO awards; the play was published by Archway Editions in October 2020. Reed is founder of the Before Columbus Foundation and PEN Oakland, non-profit organizations run by writers for writers. He is a MacArthur Fellow, and among his other honors are the University of California at Berkeley’s Distinguished Emeritus Award for the year 2020, the University of Buffalo’s 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize nominations, and a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award. Awarded the 2008 Blues Songwriter of the Year from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, his collaborations with jazz musicians for the past forty years 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.” Reed’s The Terrible Fours, the third novel in his “Terribles” trilogy, was published by Baraka Books in 2021. A March 2021 virtual reading of Reed’s most recent play, The Slave Who Loved Caviar, was followed by a full production premiered at Off-Broadway’s Theater for the New City in December, 2021. His online international literary magazine, Konch, can be found at www.ishmaelreedpub.com. His author website is located at www.ishmaelreed.org.