Ishmael Reed

Photograph: Michael Avedon

Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty-five books including Mumbo Jumbo, Yellow Back Radio Broke-DownConjugating Hindi and most recently Life Among the Aryans.

He is also a publisher, television producer, songwriter, radio and television commentator, lecturer, and has long been devoted to exploring an alternative black aesthetic: the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism. A regular contributor to CounterPunch and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years, retiring in 2005. Reed is the only person to be nominated for the National Book Award in two categories in the same year.

Books:
The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda
Life Among the Aryans
The Slave Who Loved Caviar
The Conductor (forthcoming)
The Final Version (forthcoming)