Ishmael (Scott) Reed - Selected works

Writer and poet, born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA. He studied at the University of Buffalo (1956–60), and was a founder of the East Village Other, a newspaper in New York (1965). He moved to Berkeley, CA and established the Yardbird Publishing Co (1971) and a communications company (1973). He began as a poet, but is best known for his freewheeling satirical novels using African-American themes and linguistic styles.

While some have found Reed's work a vivid, comic depiction of non-white America, others have criticized it as incoherent or muddled.

Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but grew up in Buffalo, New York, where he attended the University at Buffalo.

He moved to New York City in 1962 and helped establish the East Village Other, a well-known underground publication.

Reed's best-known works include The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967, Reed's first novel), Mumbo-Jumbo (1972), Flight to Canada (1976), and The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974).

He also edited From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002 (2003) where he endorses an open definition of American poetry as an amalgamation, which should include work found in the traditional canon of European-influenced American poetry as well as work by immigrants, hip hop artists, and Native Americans.

Reed currently lives in Oakland, California.

Selected works

The Freelance Pallbearers, 1967 Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, 1969 Mumbo-Jumbo, 1972 Neo-HooDoo Manifesto, 1972 Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963-1970, 1972 Chattanooga: Poems, 1973 The Last Days of Louisiana Red, 1974 Flight to Canada, 1976 Secretary to the Spirits, 1978 Shrovetide in Old New Orleans: Essays, 1978 The Terrible Twos, 1982 God Made Alaska for the Indians: Selected Essays, 1982 Reckless Eyeballing, 1986 New and Collected Poetry,1988 Writing is Fighting: Thirty-Seven Years of Boxing on Paper, 1988 The Terrible Threes, 1989 Before Columbus Foundation Fiction Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards 1980-1990 Tell My Horse : Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, 1990?