Call for Contributors – Fire Stories

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A NiCHE Series
Proposal Deadline: June 1, 2022
Draft Deadline: July 15, 2022
Series Publication: August-September 2022

It’s only May, but in many parts of the world the 2022 wildfire and smoke season has already begun. Within environmental history, forest fire has often been treated as its own discrete subject – a subfield which examines burns within specific jurisdictional or ecological contexts. As wildfire seasons gets longer and more severe, fires and their pasts intersect with our lives in multiple and sometimes unexpected ways. As we breathe in smoke, struggle to house evacuees, and work to adapt our lives and economies to a “world on fire,” the connectivity between fire and society become increasingly clear. Fire Stories encourages contributors to consider the ways in which tendrils of flame intervene in our lives and our research as environmental historians.

NiCHE invites submissions for Fire Stories, a series about encounters between environmental historians and wildfire, both in the archives and on the land.

Submissions might take the form of:

  • Reflections on the intersections between fire history and other parts of the field (such as gender, labour, race, politics, or economy).
  • Narratives placing modern fires in their multiple historic contexts.
  • Personal accounts of encounters with fire, burned landscapes, or smoke as part of broader relationships with land.
  • Stories from the archive related to individuals, technologies, or institutions involved in forest management or fire fighting.
  • Reflections on the past and future of fire historiography.
  • Questions of environmental justice related to wildfire.


Posts can be:
Blog posts (800-1200 words)
Creative Non-fiction
Audio and Visual Projects, such as podcasts or photo essays


Submit a 100-300 word abstract describing your proposed submission, as well as a short bio using this Google Form by June 1, 2022.

Applicants will alerted of their submission status by June 10. Please email Mica Jorgenson, Mica.Jorgenson [@] uis.no, with any questions or other inquiries.

NiCHE offers $100 CAD honoraria to contributors without adequate or consistent access to institutional support. Learn more about our honoraria policy here.

Feature image courtesy of the author.

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Mica Jorgenson

Mica Jorgenson is an environmental historian of natural resources in Canada. She works in both the academic and public sectors, and teaches periodically at the University of Northern British Columbia.

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