About

Hi dearest reader,

My name is Amani Hope, I'm a writer and reader from the Bay Area, California. I'm a 33-year-old woman and I love writing letters with a quill and ink, I love film photography and drawing, I love to dance and hike in the redwoods, I have a poodle named Mr. Darcy, and a partner I've adored since I was 20. I can get a little sad sometimes due to chronic pain but I love to laugh through it and center joy. 

I first fell in love with writing letters when my sister and I were teenagers, with vintage paper, feather quills, ink, and wax seals. We wrote to each other even though we lived in the same house. I'm very fond of my sister and want to bring you the delight we felt back then to everything I do with the club.

Today, I write a book recommendation newsletter on Substack called Books & Banter with a community of 3,000 subscribers, and now the Dearest Reader Club is a snail mail club I started because I want to spend more time in my real life and less time on social media, but more importantly I want to give the world an option to have a bookish, inspiring moment with tangible ephemera you can hold in your hands, so you can take a break from social media when you want to too.

Ad-based “Social media” as we once knew it isn’t the same anymore, so I’m going back to the purest social media we have available to us: the postal service! 

My snail mail club is to keep us cultured and inspired about reading every month. With personal letters, curated book recommendations, and a pretty bookmark that makes us want to open our books and read.

(Plus with custom, colorful envelopes that make us feel happy to get mail. <3)

Love, Amani