Shira Sebban is a registered migration agent for refugees and a writer based in Sydney, Australia.

In June 2022, Shira was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to the Jewish community in a range of roles. A member of community group SASS (Supporting Asylum Seekers Sydney), she also teaches refugee migration law at the University of Technology Sydney and serves as a guide at the Sydney Jewish Museum, combining lessons learned notably about the Holocaust with her passion for social justice.

An experienced journalist, Shira has a BA (Honours) degree from the University of Melbourne and taught French while undertaking postgraduate research at the University of Queensland.

Shira’s first book, Unlocking the Past: Stories from my Mother’s Diary (Jerusalem: Mazo Publishers, 2018), is a series of creative non-fiction stories about Israel in the mid-1950s, based on her mother Naomi’s diary, which was only discovered after her death.

Her second book, Vietnam’s Modern Day People: Bridging Borders for Freedom (Jefferson: McFarland, 2024), has recently been published in English. It tells the story of how volunteer advocates from across the globe banded together to help several Vietnamese refugee families on their journey to freedom. Highlighting the extraordinary courage of “ordinary” people – both refugees and advocates – in their struggle for liberty, it shows what can be achieved when borders prove no boundary. Shira is excited to be working with Quill Hawk Publishing on the Vietnamese edition of the book, which will be published in April 2025 to mark the 50th anniversary of Black April.