Louise W. Knight

Louise (Lucy) W. Knight has always liked to have one foot in the present and one in the past. In her younger years she worked as a journalist in Washington, D.C., and as a fundraiser at Duke University, Wheaton College (Mass.), and United South End Settlements in Boston but her itch to write about history was always there. After publishing magazine and journal articles, book reviews and essays in book collections, in 2005 she published her first book CITIZEN: JANE ADDAMS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY (University of Chicago Press, 2005), about the first half of the life of Jane Addams. Her second book, a full life biography of Addams entitled JANE ADDAMS: SPIRIT IN ACTION, will be published by W. W. Norton in September 2010. While working on CITIZEN, Knight returned to Evanston, where she was born, to support herself as a consultant with nonprofits and foundations. In her lectures, booktalks, and other writings, she explores the connections between early and current progressive civic action.