PASSINGS
Elsie B. Washington, 66, a pioneering romance novelist whose 1980 book “Entwined Destinies” was the first novel in the genre to feature African American characters by a black author, died May 5 in New York City of complications from cancer and multiple sclerosis, the New York Times reported.
“Entwined Destinies,” written under the pen name Rosalind Welles, was the only novel by Washington, a former business reporter for Newsweek magazine.
She also worked as a writer and editor for the New York Post and for Life and Essence magazines.
Washington was born in the Bronx, N.Y., on Dec. 28, 1942. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the City College of New York.
In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel some years ago, Washington said she prepared herself to write her novel by reading scores of romances.
“I treated it seriously,” she said. “It was the very first ethnic romance. For all I knew, maybe it was going to be the only one. So I wanted to get a whole spectrum of black folks in the book.”
According to the New York Times account, the black romance novel genre is thriving today and its authors include Sandra Kitt, Beverly Jenkins and Rochelle Alers.
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