Portrait of author Elaine Weiss by Nina Subin.
Author photo by Nina Subin

Biography

Elaine Weiss is a journalist and author whose feature writing has been recognized with prizes from the Society of Professional Journalists, and her by-line has appeared in many national publications.

A MacDowell Colony Fellow and Pushcart Prize “Editor’s Choice” honoree, she is the author of the highly-acclaimed narrative history The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote (Viking/Penguin) 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 previous book, Fruits of Victory: The Woman’s Land Army in the Great War was excerpted in Smithsonian Magazine and featured on C-Span and public radio stations nationwide.

Weiss holds a graduate degree from the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University. She is a popular public speaker and frequent media commentator on the themes of women’s political organization and modern voting rights, with recent op-eds published in The New York Times and interviews on NPR’s All Things Considered, CBS Sunday Morning, and PBS American Experience.

Steven Speilberg’s Amblin production company is adapting The Woman’s Hour for the screen, with Hillary Rodham Clinton serving as Executive Producer.