Elaine Weiss Elaine Weiss is a journalist and author, whose feature writing has been recognized with prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists, and her byline has appeared in many national publications.
Elaine’s book about the woman suffrage movement and ratification of the 19th Amendment, The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (Viking/Penguin) has won critical acclaim, hailed as a “riveting, nail-biting political thriller” with powerful parallels to today’s political environment. The Woman’s Hour was a GoodReads Readers’ Choice Award winner, short-listed for the 2019 Chautauqua Prize, and received the American Bar Association’s highest honor, the 2019 Silver Gavel Award.
Her newest book, SPELL FREEDOM: THE UNDERGROUND SCHOOLS THAT BUILT THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT (OneSignal/Simon & Schuster 2025) chronicles the next historic fight for equality and suffrage: the struggle to restore Black citizens’ voting rights in the Jim Crow south–spotlighting Septima Clark and the “citizenship schools” that trained Black adults to reclaim their Constitutional rights.
Elaine is a popular public speaker and media commentator on the themes of women’s political organizing and voting rights. She lives in Baltimore.