Ishmael Reed (1995)

Teacher, novelist, essayist, journalist, teacher, and media activist, Ishmael Reed has produced many politically thoughtful works.  His books Writin’ Is Fightin’: Thirty-seven Years of Boxing on Paper (1988), later revised and expanded as Writing Is Fighting: Forty-three Years of Boxing on Paper (1998), aptly describe Ishmael Reed’s writing, which never fails to challenge the status quo. Central themes in his fiction and nonfiction include race, class, gender, and mass media – all of which Reed approaches from an historical context. His latest nonfiction is Pow Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience: Short Fiction from Then to Now (2009).