For the Writer’s Residency for Research-Creation in Art & Science “The Thick Present” at Paris Cité University in collaboration with the Centre des politiques de la Terre and the Culture Department of the Paris Cité University, Phœbe Hadjimarkos Clarke will undertake a writing project on fires. The starting point for this exploration is the author’s grandmother, Clara, a fire lookout in the American West during the 1940s and 1950s. The projected text will feature several investigations whose tentacles intertwine in times as thick as pitch: an attempt to reconstruct Clara’s mountaintop experience and place it in her biography; a field survey in the forests of Oregon; a scientific investigation on understanding the dynamics of forest fires today; the discovery of a secret pyromaniac community living a utopian, happy and radical fire.