Shirley Kumove is the author of Words Like Arrows, and More Words, More Arrows, two collections of Yiddish folk sayings. She is a contributing translator of Found Treasures, stories by Yiddish women writers. Her article on Yiddish poet Anna Margolin appears in From Memory to Transformation, and her translations of Margolin's poetry have appeared in several literary journals. She has written columns for "The Pakn Treger," the journal of the National Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, MA. Words Like Arrows was translated into German and is its second printing.

Shirley Kumove is a member of the American Literary Translators Association and has spoken at their conferences. She is in demand as a speaker and has lectured at many gatherings including: The Jewish Historical Society of Canada, The National Conference on Yiddish, The Jewish Women's Voices Conference. She was a featured speaker at The Precious Legacy Exhibit from Czechoslovakia at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Shirley Kumove has spoken to students and faculty at the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Literature and Culture at Columbia University in New York, and to students in the Yiddish Program at the University of Toronto. She has talked with students at Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto, and also with students at the Ramaz Lower School in New York City, who say: "As a result of your talk, we have become much more interested in the Yiddish Language and its history."