Reed's published works include 12 novels, beginning in 1967 with of The Freelance Pallbearers, followed by Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), Mumbo Jumbo (1972), The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974), Flight to Canada (1976), The Terrible Twos (1982), Reckless Eyeballing (1986), The Terrible Threes (1989), Japanese by Spring (1993), Juice! (2011), Conjugating Hindi (2018), and most recently The Terrible Fours, third in his "Terribles" series and published by Baraka Books of Montreal in June 2021.[21] To commemorate its 50 years in print, in 2022, Scribner's released a new edition of his third novel, Mumbo Jumbo, cited by Harold Bloom as one of 500 great books of the Western canon. It includes a new introduction by Reed.
Among Reed's other books are seven collections of poetry, including Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues: Poems 2006–2019, released by Dalkey Archive Press in November 2020; 11 collections of essays, with the most recent, Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, released by Baraka Books in September 2019; one farce, Cab Calloway Stands In for the Moon or The Hexorcism of Noxon D Awful (1970); two librettos, Gethsemane Park and in collaboration with Colleen McElroy The Wild Gardens of the Loop Garoo; a sampler collection, The Reed Reader (2000); two travelogues, of which the most recent is Blues City: A Walk in Oakland (2003); and six plays, collected by Dalkey Archive Press as Ishmael Reed, The Plays (2009). His seventh play, The Final Version, premiered at New York City's Nuyorican Poets Café in December 2013; his eighth, Life Among the Aryans ("a satire that chronicles the misadventures of two hapless revolutionaries"), had a staged reading in 2017 at the Nuyorican Poets Café[22][23] and a full production in 2018.[24][25] Reed's ninth play, The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, premiered on May 23, 2019, at the Nuyorican Poets Café.[26][27] Archway Editions, an imprint of powerHouse Cultural Entertainment, published the script in October 2020.[28] His tenth play, The Slave Who Loved Caviar,[29] received a virtual reading premiere in March 2021, and a full production premiered at the Off-Broadway venue Theater for the New City on December 23, 2021.The Conductor[30] premiered at Theater for the New City on March 9, 2023. His twelfth and newest play, The Shine Challenge 2024, premiered as a virtual staged reading February 23 through April 15, 2024, sponsored by the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.[31]
Reed's most recent nonfiction works are Malcolm and Me, an audiobook narrated by Reed and released by Audible in 2020, and The Complete Muhammad Ali, published by Baraka Books of Montreal in 2015. Audible released a new short story by Reed, "The Fool Who Thought Too Much", in November 2020.[32] In 2022, Audible released Reed's new novella, The Man Who Haunted Himself.[33]
Reed has also edited 15 anthologies, the most recent being Bigotry on Broadway, co-edited with his wife, Carla Blank, and published by Baraka Books of Montreal in September 2021.[34] Other anthologies include Black Hollywood Unchained (Third World Press, 2015) and POW WOW, Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience—Short Fiction from Then to Now (2009), a collection of works by 63 writers, co-edited with Carla Blank, which spans more than 200 years of American writing. In his foreword, Reed calls it "a gathering of voices from the different American tribes". POW WOW is the fiction companion anthology to From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900–2002 (2003), in which Reed endorses an open definition of American poetry as an amalgamation, which should include work found in the traditional Western canon of European-influenced American poetry as well as work by immigrants, hip-hop artists, and Native Americans.
The 2013 Signet Classic edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn features a new afterword by Reed. In 2019, he contributed forewords to The Collected Novels of Charles Wright, published by Harper Perennial; Charles Fréger's Cimarron: Freedom and Masquerade (Thames & Hudson); and Cathy Jackson-Gent's Surviving Financially in a Rigged System (Third World Press Foundation). His Introduction to The Minister Primarily, a previously unpublished novel by the late John Oliver Killens, was published by Amistad in July 2021. In 2023, Forewords by Reed were included in Selected Poems of Calvin C. Hernton,[35] Library of America's special publication of John A. Williams' novel, The Man Who Cried I Am,[36] and photographer Awol Erizku's Mystic Parallax.[37]
Bob Callahan, Reed, Carla Blank, Shawn Wong in 1975
