This special issue is dedicated to the theme of Women Writers and Intellectuals. Virtually no women are part of the literary/intellectual canon from Russia to Greece, and when women do appear as writers, they are generally cast as an exception, or as marginal or incidental. Their presence, in other words, only serves to reinforce, explicitly and implicitly, the masculine ideal that defines the Central, Eastern and Southeastern European intelligentsia. Yet women wrote, both in private and public. The articles written by contributors to this issue fall into two categories: those that consider the invisibility of women at the heart of the literary canon and those that reshape the images of the intelligentsia in the modern history of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. With forum: Contemporary women writers and intellectuals.