Dr Midge Gillies is the author of nine non-fiction books, including biographies of the record-breaking pilot Amy Johnson and the music hall star Marie Lloyd. In The Barbed-Wire University (Aurum Press, 2011) she explores what it was really like to be an Allied Prisoner of War in the Second World War. She is the author of Writing Lives (CUP, 2009) and co-author, with Sally Cline, of Literary Non-Fiction: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). She studied History at Girton College, Cambridge and has written for a range of national, international and regional newspapers and magazines. Her book about army wives from the Crimean War to the present day was published in August 2016. For three years she was Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge and she is Academic Director for Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education.
‘I’ve just completed my eight sessions with Midge Gillies and first of all I want to put on record my thanks and appreciation for her outstanding mentoring. She has been a wonderful teacher guiding me to see things for myself with the result that I’ve learnt a huge amount. She has been wonderfully positive and encouraging, always making me feel my biography is a worth while project. After every session I’ve felt energised and with a renewed sense of direction. As well as giving guidance on structuring and writing, she has given me very helpful advice about research. It has been a very valuable experience which I highly recommend.’ – Nicola Bennetts
