A poet, novelist, playwright, and cultural critic, Ishmael Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and raised in Buffalo, New York. Associated with the Black Arts Movement, he developed an aesthetic he called Neo-HooDoo. His poetry collections include catechism of d neoamerican hoodoo church (Paul Breman, 1970), Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963–1970 (University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), a finalist for the National Book Award, and New and Collected Poems, 1964–2007 (Carroll & Graf, 2007). His novels include the satirical Mumbo Jumbo (Doubleday, 1972). He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998 and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award.
