Shumiatcher was born on October 21, 1896, in Gomel to parents Judah and Chasia as one of eleven siblings.
Shumiatcher worked as a waitress and at a meat-packing plant until 1918, when she met and married Peretz Hirschbein, a Yiddish playwright from New York City, when he was on tour in Calgary.
Shumiatcher moved to Los Angeles in 1940 where her husband had an offer to write film scripts, of which one was produced.
The couple settled in New York, but traveled extensively around the world, going through places such as the South Pacific, Asia, and Eastern Europe.
[3] In the 1920s they lived in Warsaw, Poland, where Shumiatcher's poetry was well received and published in modernist journals of the time.