Visceral Storytelling with Rebecca Giggs
Science Write Now
English - November 02, 2021 01:00 - 33 minutes - 22.9 MBArts science writing art communication editing publishing fiction nonfiction poetry teaching Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Rebecca Giggs is an award-winning author from Perth, Australia. Rebecca writes about how people feel toward animals in a time of ecological crisis and technological change. Her debut nonfiction book, Fathoms: The World in the Whale, came out in 2020 with Simon & Schuster (US), and Scribe (Aus/UK). In the US Fathoms was awarded the prestigious 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. The book also listed as a finalist in the Kirkus Prize and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. In Australia, Fathoms won the 2020 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Prize for Literature, the Royal Zoological Society's Whitley Award for Popular Zoology, and the WA Premier's Prize for an Emerging Writer. It was also shortlisted for the 2021 Stella Prize — Australia's most renown award for writing by women and non-binary authors in any genre. Recently the book was distinguished by being 'Highly Commended' in the shortlist for the 2021 Wainwright Prize for Writing on Global Conservation.
Rebecca's essays and articles have appeared in Best Australian Science Writing and Best Australian Essays, as well as in The Atlantic, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and Griffith Review. Her topics span jellyfish swarms, how sea-turtles fare in heatwaves, the history of leeches as weather prediction devices, and whether cows have friends.
In this episode, Jessica White chats with Rebecca Giggs about her beautiful nonfiction book Fathoms: The World in the Whale and how she translates abstracted aspects of the ecological emergency—like its unfathomable scale—into a visceral narrative that is relatable for readers.
Purchase Fathoms: The World in the Whale: https://bit.ly/2ZEy2Ck
Science Write Now is funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and produced by Taylor Mitchell.
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Our opening song is 'Balmain' by Pure Milk: https://www.triplejunearthed.com/artist/pure-milk.html