Akua Lezli Hope is a creator and wisdom seeker who uses sound, words, fiber, glass, metal,and wire to create poems, patterns, stories, music, sculpture, adornments, and peace. She wrote her first speculative poems in the sixth grade and she’s been in print every year, except one, since 1974. She is published in numerous literary magazines and national anthologies. A third generation New Yorker, her honors include the NEA, two NYFAs, an SFPA award, Rhysling and Pushcart Prize nominations, among others. She has twice won Rattle’s Poets Respond. Her first collection, EMBOUCHURE, Poems on Jazz and Other Musics, won the Writer’s Digest book award. A Cave Canem fellow, her collection, THEM GONE, was published 2018 (The Word Works). Her new chapbook, Otherwheres, is available on Amazon. She’s launched Speculative Sundays, an online poetry reading series. She is completing her Words on Wheels 2020 artist grant project, poetry art cards sent monthly to the frail elderly. She’s an avid hand papermaker and crochet designer with over 130 patterns published who exhibits her
artwork regularly. A paraplegic, she founded a paratransit nonprofit. She sings songs from her favorite anime in Japanese, practices her soprano saxophone and prays for the cessation of suffering for all sentience.
