[3][4] She was raised on a tobacco farm in a predominantly Mennonite community in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where she says she was inspired at an early age by the social justice beliefs held by the residents she encountered there.
Kauffman later incorporated the beliefs she formulated in Lancaster, Pennsylvania into her written works and academic pedagogy, focussing on issues such as agricultural pollution, civil and equal rights, climate change, environmental ethics, risks to ecosystems, and the preservation of peace.
[7] Kauffman subsequently relocated to Michigan, where she became a member of the faculty of Jackson Community College and taught classes in creative writing, feminist studies, and literature.
During this period of her life, she shifted her writing focus to fiction, and received critical acclaim for her first short story collection, Places in the World a Woman Could Walk.
[11] In 2019, she donated the majority of her property to the ACRES Land Trust to preserve the grasslands, stream, wetlands, and woods there with the goal of creating an environmental sanctuary for researchers and the general public.