I’m Elyse Black, an author and writer interested in the stories we remember, the stories we forget, and the stories that refuse to disappear.

I write historical fiction, essays, and whatever else catches my attention along the way. Much of my work begins with history, particularly the lived experience of people in the past: how they understood the world around them, how they practiced their faith, how they marked the seasons, remembered their dead, tended their homes and gardens, traveled their roads, and made meaning from ordinary things.

I’m especially drawn to the places where history, faith, memory, and imagination meet. I like old customs and forgotten stories, medieval churches and country roads, gardens and graveyards, saints and storytellers. I’m interested not only in what happened in the past, but in the ways the past continues to shape the way we see ourselves.

This site is where I follow those interests.

Some of what you find here will be historical. Some will be personal. Some will be about books, writing, or the process of creating fiction. And some may simply begin with something I can’t quite stop thinking about. I don’t intend this to be a place where every thought needs to become a lesson or every post needs to serve a particular purpose. Mostly, I want it to be a place for curiosity.

My fiction takes me into other centuries and other lives, but the questions are often the same ones that interest me here and now: What do we remember? What do we forget? What do we owe to the people who came before us? And what might be worth carrying forward?

You may notice a crow around here.

Crows have an extraordinary capacity for memory. They can recognize individual people, remember places, and learn from experience. Rosemary, too, has long been associated with remembrance. Together, they seemed an appropriate emblem for a site devoted to things remembered and worth remembering.

Look around. Follow whatever interests you. I hope you’ll find something here that makes you curious about a time, a place, or a story you might otherwise have forgotten.

Welcome to a place of histories, stories, and other things worth remembering.