Rebecca Giggs, a guest at next month's Write Around The Murray festival, said pandemic confinement did not mean an end to readers' interest in the natural world.

"People are really craving an opportunity to encounter wild spaces and nature at large at a point at which everybody is in their homes," she said.

She will discuss her non-fiction work Fathoms: The World In The Whale online with fellow author James Bradley on September 11.

Originally from Perth, Giggs spoke to The Border Mail from London, where a four to five month visit has lengthened owing to Australia's international travel bans.

Already widely published in magazines, she began the six-year journey towards her first book after helping to free a whale beached in Western Australia that then slowly died.

Hearing others' theories about the incident - ill whale, savaged by killer whales or sharks, "somebody even told me they thought whale beachings were connected to falling stars" - Giggs began to explore how people understood events in nature.

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A later news story that described a washed-up dead whale with a "stupendous medley of objects" in its stomach broadened her focus further.

"Basically it had swallowed an entire greenhouse and inside that greenhouse there were hosepipes, flower pots, rope, all the tarpaulins," she said.

"Literally the metaphor for global warming.

"That image of the animal, the plastic, the future, the past, it all kind of gathered around that image."

Fathoms touches on whales so rare they have never been named, whale songs that sweep across hemispheres and whales' impact on the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere.

Giggs' research took her to Japan, where she spoke to academics and activists both for and against whaling and even had informal talks with whalers coming off their ship.

"I was so surprised to discover actually the whale still is a symbolic and charismatic animal to the Japanese," she said.

"It's just that part of the history of whaling in that nation means that its symbolism, its power doesn't prevent it from being an edible animal; in fact it justifies it being an edible animal because it represents things about national identity and certainly about Japan's recovery in the post-Second World War period."

The author said the online format of this year's WAM festival, her first, would encourage new connections between writer and reader

"You are on somebody's laptop in the kitchen while they're cooking dinner or they're on their sofa and it just, I think, engenders a more relaxed nature of conversation and it's really lovely," she said.

"To actually be up close with them through the new technology is a privilege and going to make for an exciting festival."

More details at writearoundthemurray.org.au/ or the WAM Facebook page.