This three day conference, being held at the University of Alberta, offers a forum for academics and the wider community to discuss issues around the theme of women as writers and readers. The aim of the conference is to explore these issues in the past and present, and in a local and global context. We invite contributions from a wide variety of perspectives - social, literary, artistic, historical, political, economic, scientific, legal, philosophical, and so on. What, why, and how do women read and write? What conditions shape women's reading and writing? What is the relationship between women's reading and writing?