This year marks two significant anniversaries in African-American history: 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation and 50 years since Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington. In honor of those events and as part of its celebration of Black History Month, Temple's English Department is hosting a reading by poet, essayist, playwright and novelist Ishmael Reed.

Reed is best known for challenging American political culture in his writing and calling attention to political and cultural oppression. His work has often sought to represent neglected African and African-American perspectives and more broadly to highlight all underrepresented peoples and perspectives without regard to cultural origin.

A professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkley, Reed is the winner of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and the renowned Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award. Founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, which promotes multicultural American writing through its American Book Award, Reed has been nominated for a Pulitzer and named a finalist for two National Book Awards. He is the author of more than 20 works, including Mumbo Jumbo.

"Because of his influence on multicultural writers, his view of American politics and his ideas about fiction and poetry, Reed emerges as an extremely courageous writer and as one of the most transformational literary figures of our time," said Joyce A. Joyce, professor and chair of Temple's Department of English and an expert in the areas of African-American literary criticism, African-American poetry and fiction, feminist theory and Black lesbian writers. Joyce is a 1995 recipient of the American Book Award for Literary Criticism for her collection of essays Warriors, Conjurers, and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism.

"In terms of how I analyze literature and my pedagogical style, I have been tremendously influenced by writers like Ishmael Reed, more so than by my professors. In that sense, Reed was and is my mentor," said Joyce.

WHAT: Reading by Ishmael Reed, reception to follow

WHEN: Monday, Feb. 25th, 4-6PM

WHERE: Anderson Hall, Room 17, 1114 Polett Walk