Ralph Ellison (March 1, 1914 - April 16, 1994) was an American scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man (ISBN 0679601392), which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964) and Going to the Territory (1986).

Ellison taught at Bard College, Rutgers, the University of Chicago, and New York University.

Ralph Ellison died of pancreatic cancer on April 16, 1994, and is buried in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

Five years after his death, under the editorship of John Callahan, a professor at Lewis and Clark College and Ellison's literary executor, Ellison's second novel, Juneteenth (ISBN 0394464575), was published. It was a 368-page condensation of over 2000 pages written over a period of forty years.

Related works

• Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray (with Albert Murray) (ISBN 0375503676)
• Living with Music: Ralph Ellison's Jazz Writings (ISBN 0679640347)
• The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison (1995, ISBN 0679601767)
• Flying Home: and Other Stories (1996)