About Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. Ellison wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social, and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). The New York Times dubbed him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus". A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes Ellison left upon his death. Ralph later discovered, as an adult, that his father had hoped he would grow up to be a poet. Ellison applied twice for admission to Tuskegee Institute, the prestigious all-black university in Alabama founded by Booker T. Ellison's first published story was "Hymie's Bull", inspired by his 1933 hoboing on a train with his uncle to get to Tuskegee.
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