Akua Lezli Hope

She has twice won an Artists Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1987, 2003). Her specialities are hand paper-making and crochet design. She has published more than 125 crochet patterns and is a devotee of freeform crochet.Akua Lezli Hope also creates sculpture, objects and jewelry in glass, paper and fiber. In glass she fuses, casts and flameworks.

Her collection, Embouchure, Poems on Jazz and Other Musics, was published by ArtFarm Press in 1995. It won the Writer's Digest 1995 poetry book award. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and in several anthologies, including:

• Sisterfire, an anthology of Black Womanist fiction and poetry (HarperPerennial)
• Erotique Noire/Black Erotica (Doubleday/Anchor)
• Confirmation, an anthology of African-American women writers (Quill/Morrow).

She is a founding member of the Black Writers Union and the New Renaissance Writers Guild. She is an Area Coordinator for Amnesty International.

Hope won a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as a Ragdale U. S. - Africa Fellowship. She has given over 100 readings to audiences in colleges, prisons, parks, museums, restaurants and bars. She is a founding member of the Black Writers Union and the New Renaissance Writers Guild whose alumni include Baron James Ashanti, Doris Jean Austin, Arthur Flowers and Terry McMillan (Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back).

A lifelong science-fiction enthusiast, she has had her sf poetry published in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and many other publications.Her story "The Becoming" is included in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, — named a New York Times notable book, because it was the first anthology of science fiction and fantasy by Black Writers.

Hope was the Area Coordinator for Amnesty International USA in the Southern Tier of New York and also served on Amnesty's Cultural Diversity Resource Group. She served as a staff member of the African American Resource Forum and was Section Leader of the Books and Writers section in the African American Culture Forum and of the African American Verse section in the Poetry Forum on Compuserve Information Service.

• Iron Horse Review, Photofinish contest winner, 2016.
• Being Here, semifinalist, Quills Edge Press
• Red Paint Hill Publishing Bryant-Lysembee Editor’s Prize, 2015
• Short Poem Winner, Science Fiction Poetry Association, 2015
• Finalist, Washington Prize Word Works Poetry Competition, 2015
• Walker Foundation Scholarship to Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, 2005
• Cave Canem Fellow, 2002-2004
• Two Voices/Two Pages Winner, Geva Theater 2004
• New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, 2003
• Artists Crossroads Grant, The Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes, 2003
• Awardee in the Nonrhyming Poetry Writer's Digest annual competition, 2002
• Honorable Mention, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror (2000) edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling: for "The Becoming" in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
• Artist-in-Residence, Women’s Studio Workshop, 2001
• Fellowship, Hurston-Wright Writers’ Week, 2001
• Poet-in-Residence, Chautauqua Institution, 1997
• Writer's Digest Book Awards, 1996
• Ragdale U.S.–Africa Fellowship, 1993
• Finalist, 1991 Open Voice competition
• National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, 1990
• Finalist, Barnard New Women Poets Series -1990
• Finalist, MacDonald's Black Literary Achievement Award, 1989
• New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, 1987
• Finalist, Walt Whitman Award, Spring 1983
• Sterling Brown Award, Williams College, Spring 1975

• "The Goddess Hour feat. Talitha Anyabwele, Cory and Tanisha A. Johnson, and Akua Lezli Hope" (radio), The Goddess Hour, WAYO 104.3 FM, April 26, 2018

• "Interview with Akua Lezli Hope",The Cossack Review, April 4, 2016

• "Crochet Designer Interview: Akua Lezli Hope", Crochet by Darleen Hopkins,November 27, 2016

In 2005 she was stricken with transverse myelitis, a rare idiopathic auto-immune disease, and became a paraplegic.