Ishmael Reed: Flight to Canada

Reed has also served as an editor for numerous anthologies, small presses, and publications. In 1976, he co-founded the Before Columbus Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes overlooked writers of diverse ethnicities and “a pan-cultural view of America.” The foundation has presented annual book awards for outstanding American literature since 1980, when Reed founded the American Book Awards, which the Washington Post describes as the American League to the National Book Awards’ National League.

In 1989, Reed founded PEN Oakland, a chapter of the PEN Center USA, with Floyd Salas and Claire Ortalda. The New York Times calls their group “the blue collar PEN.” The organization’s annual awards are named for the late University of California, Berkeley professor Josephine Miles.

Reed’s prolific output is unified by an interest in African American life and its wider relationships to American society. His work at times deploys parody and biting satire, using these to dissect repressively Eurocentric narratives of history and culture, and to critique dogma of all kinds. Advocating for a fully inclusive art, and marked by stylistic variety and playfulness, Reed’s work is sometimes described as postmodern. Its humor, however, is married to a passionate candor about history and social issues.

Reed’s wife is author and director Carla Blank. Blank’s recent work includes directing a play at the Kennedy Center, and collaborating with Robert Wilson on a work called “Kool: Dancing in My Mind,” which was performed at the Guggenheim Museum and made into a film called The Space in Back of You . Reed also has two daughters. Timothy, his daughter by a previous marriage, is the author of the novel Showing Out about the exploitation of strippers at a Times Square entertainment theater owned by a crime family. His youngest daughter, Tennessee, is a poet and author of Spell Albuquerque , her memoirs. They all live in Oakland, California.

Reed is pictured here as a young boy, between two and three years old.

Reed and the late Canadian Prime Minster Pierre Trudeau, at the 1986 International PEN Congress in New York City. (Photo courtesy of Quincy Troupe.)

The cast of Reed’s play Mother Hubbard , which was performed at the Nuyorican Poet's Café in 1998.

Reed stands at the Garden of Gethsemane in Jerusalem, around 2000.

Reed in Egypt.

Toni Morrison and Reed having breakfast at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco, in December 2004. (Photo courtesy of Tennessee Reed.)

The cast of A Sampler of the Theater of Ishmael Reed . The photo was taken in Reed’s backyard, in April 2012.

Reed in Beijing in 2012.