Chumachenko was born in Taganrog in 1887. Her parents Artemy Pavlovich Chumachenko and Ariadna Iasonovna Chumachenko (born Blonskaya) were both Ukrainian and teachers.[1]
She began publishing poetry locally in 1895 at the age of eight[1] and more widely from 1905. She wrote two plays for children which were staged by the Nezlobin Theater: Lully the Musician, which won a prize in 1912, and The Snow Queen in 1915. She published her first book of poems in 1912.[1]
After the Russian Revolution, she led the theater section at the People's Commissariat for Education in the Moscow Palace of Arts.[2] She brought on many young writers including Maxim Gorky.[3] After 1926 she wrote for children and her best received work was "A Man from the Moon" in 1939. This was a fictional biography of the scientist Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay.[1]
During the war she moved jobs and ended up in 1945 at the children's magazine Murzilka.
Chumachenko died in Moscow in 1954.
