Amirah Inglis was born on 7 December 1926 in Brussels and migrated to Melbourne in 1929. She was educated at MacRobertson Girls' High School and graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BA Hons in history, later studying at Canberra University College. Inglis was a member of the Communist Party of Australia from 1945-1962. From 1948 to 1950 she worked on the Communist weekly, The Guardian. She has worked as a Librarian, research assistant and as a teacher in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Inglis has written essays, articles and reviews including two books on Papua New Guinea, and Australians in the Spanish Civil War (Allen & Unwin, 1987) which she researched while at the Australian National University in 1986.