Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His family moved to Buffalo, New York, when he was a child, during the Great Migration. After attending local schools, Reed attended the University at Buffalo. Reed withdrew from college in his junior year, partly for financial reasons, but mainly because he felt he needed a new atmosphere to support his writing and music. He said of this decision:
This was the best thing that could have happened to me at the time because I was able to continue experimenting along the lines I wanted, influenced by [Nathanael] West and others. I didn't want to be a slave to somebody else's reading lists. I kind of regret the decision now because I've gotten some of the most racist and horrible things said to me because of this.[10]
In 1995, the college awarded him an honorary doctorate.[11]
Speaking about his influences, Reed has said:
I've probably been more influenced by poets than by novelists—the Harlem Renaissance poets, the Beat poets, the American surrealist Ted Joans. Poets have to be more attuned to originality, coming up with lines and associations the ordinary prose writer wouldn't think of.[12]
Among writers from the Harlem Renaissance for whose work Reed has expressed admiration are Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, George Schuyler, Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, Rudolph Fisher and Arna Bontemps.[13]
In 1962, Reed moved to New York City and co-founded with Walter Bowart the East Village Other, which became a well-known underground publication. Reed was also a member of the Umbra Writers Workshop (he attended his first Umbra meeting in Spring 1963, with others present including Lorenzo Thomas, Askia Touré, Charles Patterson, David Henderson, Albert Haynes, and Calvin Hernton),[14] some of whose members helped establish the Black Arts Movement and promoted a Black Aesthetic. Although Reed never participated in that movement, he has continued to research the history of black Americans. While working on his novel Flight to Canada (1976), he coined the term "Neo-Slave narrative", which he used in 1984 in "A Conversation with Ishmael Reed" by Reginald Martin.[15] During this time, Reed also made connections with musicians and poets such as Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Albert Ayler, which contributed to Reed's vast experimentation with jazz and his love for music.
In 1970, Reed moved to the West Coast to begin teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught for 35 years. Retired from there in 2005, he is serving as a Distinguished Professor at California College of the Arts. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife of more than 50 years, Carla Blank, a noted author, choreographer, and director.[16]
Reed's archives are held by the Special Collections at the University of Delaware in Newark. Ishmael Reed: An Exhibition, curated by Timothy D. Murray, was shown at the University of Delaware Library from August 16 to December 16, 2007.[17]
