A nomadic life, chronicled in Expat Life Slice by Slice, has seen Anglo-Australian Apple Gidley live and work in twelve countries. Her roles have been varied – editor, intercultural trainer for multi-national corporations, British Honorary Consul to Equatorial Guinea, amongst others.

Three of Gidley’s novels are historical. Fireburn (2017) and the sequel, Transfer (2019) take place in the Danish West Indies (now the US Virgin Islands) of the late 1800s.

Have You Eaten Rice Today? (Vine Leaves Press 2022) a dual time story describes the communist uprising of 1950s Malaya and Australia juxtaposed with modern England and Malaysia.

Crucian Fusion: Essays, Tales and Conversations (2020) are stories, real and imagined, about her time living in the Caribbean.

Finding Serenissima, this time a contemporary novel with Venice as the backdrop, will be published by Vine Leaves Press in March 2025. Her WIP, with the working title of Annie’s Day, also accepted by VLP and also dual time, returns to a historical setting – New Guinea and Australia during the War and rural Cambridgeshire now.

Themes of race, class, and loss as well as love – sometimes forbidden – found in unexpected places run throughout Gidley’s books which take place in often lesser known parts of the world, both modern and historical.

Having run the Writer’s Circle of St Croix for seven years, Gidley knows the benefit of a supportive critique group and now, recently relocated to England, has started a writer’s group, Ickleton Jotters, in the South Cambridgeshire area. She speaks at book clubs, fairs, workshops and writing retreats.

Gidley has written travel articles and pieces about expatriate living for numerous magazines – both print and online. She also writes A Broad View – a sporadic blog.