About
Shireen Jeejeebhoy is an award-winning author. Shireen writes books, blogs about Toronto and brain injury, and creates visual art.
Shireen’s first book, Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story (2007), was an award-winning biography about a patient and her pioneering doctor whose ground-breaking work made it possible to live without eating. A Canadian innovation, this artificial life support saves tens of thousands of lives every year around the globe.
Shireen’s latest book Concussion Is Brain Injury: Treating the Neurons and Me (2017) garnered seven five-star reviews and an invitation to blog on Psychology Today. Using this memoir as a launch pad, Shireen advocates for replacing standard medical care with effective neurostimulation and neuromodulation therapies to restore people’s health and return them to their full potential. This advocacy lead her to become the brain injury consultant and dramaturge on Brain Storm (play, 2020). Brain Storm ran at Dancemakers Studio in Toronto’s historic Distillery District just before COVID-19 shut down Toronto.
Shireen has written several novels that feature Toronto as a character and star women finding their way without romance giving them the answers. Women talk to each other about something other than a man, and, drawing on her tri-continent background, diversity emerges naturally in her stories. Dogs and cats cavort in supporting roles.
Shireen was born in London, England, spent her formative years in Bombay, India, and grew up in Toronto, Canada. She obtained a B.Sc. in psychology from the University of Toronto, launched into writing and computer programming, and slammed and somersaulted into the unknown life of brain injury with its paradoxes. After she relearnt to photograph and write several years after the car crash, she wrote a book or more every year. And she explored the city through her camera lens. She has many more manuscripts than published books. She was invited in 2019 to join a working group for a new website. Fanship connects readers with authors and uses blockchain to ensure authors are paid for their work. Shireen blogs and designs websites. On Twitter, she encourages people to think and act on brain injury, gender equality, city life, accessibility, inclusivity, and COVID-19.
She’s a member of the Brain Injury Society of Toronto and has participated in their annual Expressive Art Show every year since it began. You can find her latest pieces as posters in her Art Fit To Wear online shop.
Shireen fell in love with photography at the age of 11 when she borrowed her mother’s mid-20th century camera for a school trip. She kept borrowing cameras for years until she received her own, a Minolta Maxxum 7000. When her brain injury robbed her of her photography, neurostimulation restored it to her. Treatment made possible using a Nikon Coolpix 2 then a DSLR Nikon D80 and a membership on Flickr. She’s expanded her instinctive photography into creating digital art and, in the year of the pandemic, painting and analogue collages, turning them into posters and prints.
Shireen uses her personal website to update her book Concussion Is Brain Injury: Treating the Neurons and Me and continues research on herself to heal her brain. In the COVID-19 pandemic year one, she completed a month-long study on the effects of gamma brainwave audiovisual entrainment with good results and thoughts on further, robust research. She continues to write on her reading recovery and writes a Psychology Today blog on concussion and brain injury. In an effort to fund her writing efforts and brain injury advocacy, she became a creator on Patreon. Join with her today by supporting her brain advocacy through Patreon, Art Fit To Wear, or buying her books. Thank you!