She served in the United States Navy during World War II.

[2] She helped her husband establish the literary magazine Beatitude.

Kaufman also wrote down Bob Kaufman's spoken verse and assembled the poems into the book Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness,[3] which was published in 1965 by New Directions Publishing.

At one point, Eileen Kaufman moved from New York to San Francisco without her husband and wrote for publications including the Los Angeles Free Press and Billboard magazine, covering music.

[3] Portions of Kaufman's unpublished autobiography appeared in the book Women of the Beat Generation edited by Brenda Knight.