Editor and Publisher
Yardbird Reader
Ishmael Reed, along with Al Young and several others, founded The Yardbird Reader to be a multi-cultural magazine devoted to literature and art. They published five issues between 1972-1976 before a legal dispute caused Reed and Young to lose the rights to the magazine. They published Yardbird Lives! in 1978 as a means of recouping some of their financial outlay, and eventually Y'Bird, but a court ruled they could use neither of these names.
Announcement for Yardbird Reader accompanied by the original plate used to print it.
Printed invitation to a publication party for Yardbird Reader 4.
Yardbird Reader, volume 1 (1972).
Yardbird Reader, volume 4 (1975).
Jayne Cortez, "Rose Solitude," photocopied typescript, [1976], 2 pp.
Published in Yardbird Reader, No. 5, and in the anthology Calafia: the California Poetry (Berkeley: Y'Bird Books, 1979).Yardbird Lives!, edited by Ishmael Reed and Al Young. New York: Grove Press, [1978].
Y'Bird Magazine (Berkeley), vol. 1, no. 1, (1978), published and edited by Ishmael Reed and Al Young.
Floyd Salas, "Sit-in," typescript draft of a section from Lay My Body on the Line: a Novel (Berkeley: Y'Bird, 1978.).
Memorandum of Decision, Superior Court of the State of California, Alameda County, 28 September 1979.
Photograph of Cyn Zarko, a contributor to and associate editor of Y'Bird.
Photograph of Al Young, author and co-founder of Yardbird Reader.
Photograph of Jayne Cortez, author and contributor to Yardbird Reader.
Lezley Saar. Yolanda and the Strange Objects. Berkeley: I. Reed Books, 1978.
This book by the artist Lezley Saar is one of eighteen titles Ishmael Reed published under his I. Reed Books imprint.Quilt (Berkeley), vols 1 & 2, (1981).
The first two volumes of this magazine which Ishmael Reed and Al Young edited from 1981-1986. With Quilt the editors hoped to "stitch together patches and pieces of human experience to create what has come to be called literature and art." (From Al Young's "Introduction.").The Reed Reader. [New York]: Basic Books, [2000].
This collection presents samples from Ishmael Reed's writing in all genres from his entire career.From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002, edited by Ishmael Reed. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, [2003].
Introduction | Early Work | The Novels | Poetry | Essays and Non-fiction
Ishmael Reed in Translation | Theatrical and Performance Writing