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. Published in numerous literary magazines and national anthologies, she’s been in print every year, except one, since 1974. A first-born, third generation, African Caribbean New Yorker, her honors include the National Endowment for the Arts writing fellowship, two New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellowships, a Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association prize, 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 in 2018 (The Word Works). She’s launched Speculative Sundays, a biweekly online poetry reading series. She is completing her Words on Wheels 2020 artist grant project, poetry art cards sent monthly to the frail elderly. An avid hand papermaker and crochet designer with over 130 patterns published, she exhibits her artwork regularly. A paraplegic, she founded a paratransit nonprofit. Her speculative poetry chapbook, Otherwheres (ArtFarm Press, 2020), is available on Amazon. She sings songs from her favorite anime in Japanese, practices her soprano saxophone and prays for the cessation of suffering for all sentience.