Wendy Laura Belcher

WENDY LAURA BELCHER is professor of African literature in Princeton University's Department of Comparative Literature and Department of African American Studies. Her scholarly interests emerge from her life experiences growing up in East and West Africa, where she became fascinated with the richness of Ghanaian and Ethiopian intellectual traditions. Her research books in progress are *Ladder of Heaven: The Miracles of the Virgin Mary in Ethiopian Literature and Art* and *The Black Queen of Sheba: A Global History of an African Idea.* She has published a cotranslation with Michael Kleiner of *The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an Ethiopian Woman.* She has received many awards for her research and writing, including the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women award for the best Scholarly Edition in Translation of 2015, the African Studies Association Paul Hair Award for the Best Critical Edition or Translation of Primary Source Materials on Africa in 2015-2017, the Washington State Governors Writers Award, and the PEN Society Martha Albrand Award Finalist. Her book *Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success* (2019) is a best-seller and has helped tens of thousands publish their work.