In February 2014, 1200 researchers from 60 countries assembled in Paris for the third Writing Research Across Borders conference. Although this book cannot convey fully the rich diversity of the gathering, it attempts nonetheless to highlight key questions which are shaping the current state of research in the field of writing studies. The contributors to this collection engage in a wide-ranging conversation about writing, a conversation made possible through a shared focus on improving learning and language usage. The chapters fall at various points, as a result, along a line extending from straightforward expressions of pedagogical concerns to focused analysis of how writing and texts work.