Akua Lezli Hope is an African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 woman artist, poet and writer. Akua is a third generation New Yorker. She was born in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 and grew up in the South Bronx

South Bronx

The South Bronx is an area of the New York City borough of The Bronx. The neighborhoods of Tremont, University Heights, Highbridge, Morrisania, Soundview, Hunts Point, and Castle Hill are sometimes considered part of the South Bronx....

 and Queens

Queens

Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....

. Akua has degrees from Williams College

Williams College

Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...

 and Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 in psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, journalism

Journalism

Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...

 and business. Akua is a talented woman with diverse interests including music. She also sings and plays the saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

.

Artist

She has twice won an Artists Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts

New York Foundation for the Arts

The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...

(1987,2003) . Her speciality is hand paper-making. Akua Lezli Hope also creates sculpture, objects and jewelry in glass and paper. In glass she fuses, casts and flameworks.

Poet

Her collection, Embouchure, Poems on Jazz and Other Musics, was published by ArtFarm Press in 1995. It won the Writer's Digest

Writer's Digest

Writer's Digest is an American magazine devoted to both beginning and established writers, offering interviews, market listings, calls for manuscripts, and how-to articles....

 1995 poetry book award. Her work appears 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)

as well as numerous literary magazines.

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

Amnesty International

Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

.

Writer

Hope has won a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

 as well as a Ragdale

Ragdale

Ragdale is the summer retreat of Chicago architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, located in Lake Forest, Illinois. It is also the home of the Ragdale Foundation...

 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

Terry McMillan

Terry McMillan is an American author. Her interest in books comes from working at a library when she was sixteen. She received her BA in journalism in 1986 at University of California, Berkeley. Her work is characterized by strong female protagonists.Her first book, Mama, was published in 1987...

 (Waiting to Exhale

Waiting to Exhale

Waiting to Exhale is a 1995 romance film starring Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett, directed by Forest Whitaker. The movie was adapted from the 1992 novel of the same name by Terry McMillan. Loretta Devine, Lela Rochon, Dennis Haysbert, Michael Beach, Gregory Hines, Donald Faison and Mykelti...

, How Stella Got Her Groove Back

How Stella Got Her Groove Back

How Stella Got Her Groove Back is a 1998 romance film, directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan. The film stars Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Whoopi Goldberg and Regina King. This film is an adaptation of Terry McMillan's bestselling novel by the same title...

). Akua was the Area Coordinator for Amnesty International, U. S. A., 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

CompuServe

CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...

 Information Service.

Health

In 2005 she was stricken with Transverse Myelitis

Transverse myelitis

Transverse myelitis is a neurological disorder caused by an inflammatory process of the spinal cord, and can cause axonal demyelination. The name is derived from Greek referring to the "spinal cord", and the suffix -itis, which denotes inflammation...

, a rare idiopathic auto-immune disease, and became a paraplegic.