Since the turn of the twenty - first century , and in the latter part of its second decade in particular, women’s writing in French has seen an increasing focus on mobility, that is to say “ works of fiction which are affected and shaped by migratory flows” (Dagnino 2015, 145). Since t he trope of the crossing is at the heart of all literat ures of mobility, this special issue explores emerging trends of representing the many dimensions of the crossings in contemporary women’s writing in French that are both physical and conceptual , focusing on ways in which recent women’s writing in French crosses – or struggles to cross – formal, spatial, national, cultural, linguistic, racial and gender boundaries in texts produced in or between the African, Asian, American and European continent s. Featuring bilingual and translingual works, and works infused by the multilingual, transcultural heritage of their authors, these articles identify the textual and artistic practices resulting from crossings between languages ( in trans lingual texts), cultures ( in texts that breach cultural frontiers ), and media ( in both textual and visual genres , including prose, poetry, photography and bande dessinée ).