She studied at the Library College in Rostov-on-Don before transferring to the Russian Language and Literature Department of the Rostov State Pedagogical Institute, from which she graduated in 1933.

[1] Shirman first began publishing her work in 1924, first in local periodicals and later in the Moscow journals October (Октябрь) and Change (Смена).

[2] From 1933 to 1936 she worked at various jobs, including bookkeeper for a group of tractor operators, and kitchen assistant at Selmash, then the Soviet Union's largest manufacturer of wheat-harvesting machinery.

While studying at the Gorky Literary Institute, she also edited several local periodicals and consulted for two youth newspapers, Lenin's Grandchildren and Pioneer's Truth.

By this time, Marchikhin was a handsome young soldier in the Red Army, and Shirman was a socially awkward, lonely 31-year-old woman.

[3] In July 1942, while traveling through the frontline area as a member of the editorial group of the regional Soviet newspaper Molot (Hammer),[4] she was captured by Nazis at the Remontnaya railway station in Rostov Oblast, and never heard from again.