[1] Her short stories dealt with themes of interpersonal moral conflicts, class difference, and marriage.
Little is known about Koestijah's background, education, or early life, except that she was of Javanese ethnicity and was probably born in the 1910s.
In the 1930s she joined the new generation of young Javanese women writers who edited and wrote short stories for Panjebar Semangat, a Javanese-language literary magazine published in which was published in Surabaya by Soetomo and Imam Soepardi.
Among the stories published by Koestijah in Panjebar Semangat were Keantepane Katresnan, published in 1933 and which described the life of a woman who was the wife of a nobleman; Mitra Darma (1933) about two friends grappling with a bad marriage choice; "Pancen Durung Jodhone (1933), Musthikaning Wanodya Ratuning Ayu (1940), and Rasa Adil (1941).
[5][6] During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies and after Indonesian independence, it is unclear if she continued to write and publish.