Nora Ephron 'Gave Women a Voice'

Nora Ephron, who has died at age 71, gave women a voice and opened door for them, Lisa Belkin writes in a tribute at the Huffington Post, praising the late screenwriter, director, and author's gift for celebrating—and roasting—romance, sex, and aging. "By putting the female experience on the screen and on the page, she made it visible, and worthy, and she elevated it to the level of art," Belkin writes. "She took 'women's topics'—romance, relationships, food, motherhood, clothes, hair, friendship, aging, looking young—and declared that they were not only worthy of conversation, but they could draw at the box office."

Ephron was an "artist of consolation," both on the page and on the screen, writes Ariel Levy at the New Yorker. "Hers was a world where humor always trumped loss," though countless fans will feel her loss personally, writes Levy. The feeling Ephron gave her of having an "arch and insightful new best friend, under whose spell everything would come out all right in the end, was a gift she kept giving to strangers—women in particular—throughout her life, from her early essays about her small breasts to her best-selling lament on aging, 'I Feel Bad About My Neck,'" she writes. Click for her full tribute; Belkin's is here. (More Nora Ephron stories.)