During the year after high school, Konigsburg worked as a bookkeeper in a wholesale meat plant. David Konigsburg, a brother of one of the owners of the meat plant, visited the office and he and Elaine became friendly. When she finally had enough money for her first year of college, Konigsburg enrolled in Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh as a chemistry major. She was the first person in her family to go to college. In 1952, she graduated with honors and received a Bachelor of Science degree. She married David Konigsburg on July 6, 1952. While her husband studied psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, Konigsburg pursued her studies in chemistry. She attended graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh until 1954.
After her husband completed his doctoral degree in psychology, the couple moved to Jacksonville, Florida. Konigsburg got a job teaching science at Bartram, a private school for girls. While teaching, she became more interested in the uncomfortable feelings the adolescents were experiencing than in the science classes themselves. She quit teaching in 1955, a short time before her son Paul was born. A year later, after her daughter, Laurie, was born, Konigsburg took up painting. In 1959, her third child, Ross, was born. The following year, Konigsburg returned to teaching part-time. She taught for two years, and, in 1962, her family moved to the metropolitan New York area. When her younger son started school, Konigsburg began writing. Her first two books, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, were published in 1967. Konigsburg and her family moved back to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1968. In the middle of moving, she found out that From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was a Newbery Medal winner and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named a Newbery Honor Book.
Since winning her first Newbery Medal Award, Konigsburg has written and illustrated numerous books. Her audience is mostly made up of junior high school students or students in late elementary school. Her writing has received much acclaim. Twenty-nine years after winning her first Newbery Medal, Konigsburg won her second Newbery Medal Award, this time for The View From Saturday.
Today, Konigsburg lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, with her husband, David. When she isn't writing, she enjoys reading, drawing, painting, and walking on the beach.
