Ishmael Reed, together with Toni Morrison, is one of today's pre-eminent African American literary figures--perhaps the most widely reviewed since Ralph Ellison, and, along with Samuel Delany and Amiri Baraka, probably the most controversial. -Ishmael Reed began writing his own jazz column for Empire State, a weekly African American newspaper in Buffalo, NY Post Open in 192. Since the publication of his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, in 1967, Reed has thus far produced seven novels, four …showed first 75 words of 468 total…

…showed last 75 words of 468 total…The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974). (complete bibliography below). Mumbo Jumbo (1972) was the work that first achieved wide notoriety for the author, and it is considered by several scholars to be his best, along with Flight to Canada (1976). Two of Reed's books have been nominated for National Book Awards, and he has received numerous honors, fellowships, and prizes, including the Lewis H. Michaux Literary Prize, awarded to him in 1978 by the Studio Museum in Harlem.