She married the German-American scholar Robert L. Kahn and emigrated to the United States, where she was a teacher at The Kinkaid School from 1964 to 1968 and professor of German at Texas Southern University from 1968 to 1990, serving as head of the foreign language department from 1988.

After World War II, she worked as interpreter for the legal division of the US Office of Military Government in Württemberg-Baden.

[11] She received various distinctions and awards, including the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1990[4][11] and was named Poeta Laureata by the University of New Mexico[16] in 1993.

[19] She edited a volume of related prose and poetry, Reisegepäck Sprache, in 1979, that among other goals aimed to relieve the comparative lack of representation of women writers in literary anthologies.

[20] Together with University of Cincinnati professor of German, Jerry Glenn, she produced an updated bilingual edition in 1983, In her mother's tongue.

[22][23] She also wrote about other authors including Ernst Jandl, Günter Kunert, Friederike Mayröcker and Kurt Tucholsky.

[13] Starting in 1975 with Klopfet an, so wird euch nicht aufgetan,[4] Kahn published her poetry and short prose in eighteen volumes.

[30] Reviewer Don Tolzmann noted Kahn's "unique perspective" and found the poems dealt "quite successfully with basic universal themes".

[31] The 1986 collection Flußbettworte / Fluvial Discourse was described by reviewer Rita Terras as "exceptionally broad" in range, using a wide selection of types of poetry and geographical settings.

[25] Jerry Glenn described Kahn as "the prototypical example of an important author who is universally recognized as 'German-American'" in an article on the definition of German-American Literature.