Ishmael Reed is an internationally renowned novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist, with more than 25 published books and six plays to his credit. He also is a publisher, editor of numerous anthologies and magazines, television producer, and radio and television commentator. Two of Reed's books have been nominated for National Book Awards, and his book Conjure: Selected Poems, 1963–1970 was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Reed has received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. He was a lecturer at UC Berkeley for 26 years and has also taught at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Yale. He is originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He will be a spring 2012 visiting artist at CCA.

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