Marfa Kryukova was born in 1876 in the village of Nizhnyaya Zolotitsa in Arkhangelsk governorate. Her father, Semyon Kryukov, was a fisherman, and her mother, Agrafena Kryukova, was a famous local storyteller. From memory, she retold old epics, sang songs, and sometimes composed stories herself — the so-called ‘novinas’.

Agrafena Kryukova also taught her daughter: at the age of 14, the girl became famous as a talented storyteller.
The ethnographer Alexey Markov, who was still a student, first recorded the songs and epics of Marfa Kryukova in 1899. He wrote that the young storyteller preferred songs

 
In the 1930s, Kryukova’s mother and brother died. She did not marry and lived in the family of her sister Pavla. In those years, ethnographers and collectors of folklore often visited Marfa Kryukova. They wrote down the texts of the legends that she told, and published them later. In 1937, the Pomor storyteller was invited to Moscow: there she was commissioned to create works that would praise the Soviet authorities. Marfa Kryukova wrote two novinas: a lament for Lenin ‘Moscow cried’ and ‘Stalin’s glory will be eternal.’ Both works were published in the “Pravda” newspaper. After that, Kryukova composed several more novinas, the heroes of which were Mikhail Lomonosov, Vasily Chapaev, and Maxim Gorky.