Apple An is an award-winning Chinese-American author and professor whose life and work bridge continents, disciplines, and generations. Born during China’s Cultural Revolution and immigrated to the United States in 1989, she carries in her writing the echoes of history, the resilience of memory, and the hope of cross-cultural and cross-generational connection. 

With over 200 scholarly publications and three academic books to her name, Apple has built a distinguished career in higher education at Syracuse University since 1995. Her research has been cited over 16,500 times across disciplines, and she was recognized with 24 national and international honors for research, teaching, and service. She is a founding editor-in-chief of a major academic journal and an inaugural historian for two international academic associations. 

But Apple’s most transformative work began outside the academic lecture halls in stories rooted in personal truth and historical depth. In 2017, she turned to creative writing to pass down her cultural legacy to her children, only to discover a broader calling: to preserve what history overlooks and to amplify the voices silenced by time. 

Under her pen name, Apple An, she writes literary fiction, memoir, and historical novels that uncover the textured realities of people’s lives through a deeply personal lens. 

Her debut memoir, Las Crosses: An Unwavering Journey to a New Life in America, chronicles her first eight months after arriving in Las Cruces, New Mexico, from Beijing. It became an Amazon bestseller in multiple categories, Biographies and Memoirs of Asian Americans, History of China, and Biographies of Educators, and was named a finalist for the 2023 IAN Book of the Year Awards and 2025 Readers’ Choice Book Awards. It also earned 2nd and 3rd places at the 2023 Outstanding Creator Awards. 

In 2024, Apple released her first historical novel, Mother of Red Mountains: A Novel of a Woman’s Journey Through Revolutionary China. Based on real lives and historical events, the novel is both a tribute to the unsung strength of Chinese women and a meditation on love, loss, and survival under totalitarian rule. The book achieved the #1 New Release status on Amazon in Historical Chinese Fiction and has since won multiple awards from both mainstream and indie award bodies, including:

• 2025 American Fiction Awards: Winner in Multicultural Fiction, Family Saga, and General Fiction

• 2025 International Book Awards: Winner in Multicultural Fiction

• 2025 PenCraft Spring Best Book Awards: Winner for Historical Fiction

• Additional accolades as finalist, silver medalist, and top-category honoree in Women’s Historical Fiction, Best Adult Book, Asian American Fiction, and Historical Fiction

Beyond her literary books, Apple designs tools for intentional living. In 2023, she published the All-in-One Dotted Journal Notebook, a self-help productivity system inspired by the Bullet Journaling technique and her own method for balancing a demanding life with purpose and peace. 

She also co-edits the Voices Heard Anthology Series alongside Onondaga County Poet Laureate Georgia A. Popoff, curating work by emerging and underrepresented writers affiliated with The Writer’s Voice literary center. Volume 1, 28 Voices, was released in 2024, with the next installment coming in 2025. 

Though she has spent decades shaping students in STEM classrooms, Apple’s passion now lies in shaping understanding across cultures one story at a time. 

Apple lives in Baldwinsville, New York. A lifelong learner and lover of movement, She is a USTA-rated tennis player, an award-winning amateur ballroom dancer, and an organic gardener. In every facet of life, whether dancing, digging, or drafting prose, she remains grounded by a singular belief: that truth, told with compassion, can change the world. 

Website: AppleAnBooks.com | email: Apple@AppleAnBooks.com.