A year before Ephron died, in 2012, of an illness she kept secret for six, she took Lena Dunham under her Chanel-clad wing. “Nora influences everything I do,” Dunham wrote in an email.

Nora Ephron, Carl Bernstein, and a guest during Amnesty International Benefit, 1977 at Tavern on the Green in New York City. (Photo by Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images) ...

Nora Ephron based "Heartburn" on her marriage to Carl Bernstein. (Associated Press/The Minnesota Star Tribune) Comment Gift Share Listen ...

The marriage of Nora Ephron (left) and Carl Bernstein, pictured with another guest at a 1977 New York City event, was the subject of media gossip and scrutiny. Ron Galella Collection/Getty Images ...

Ephron, like Rachel, had indeed been married to a high-profile Washington journalist, the Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein.

In 1983, Nora Ephron published Heartburn, a roman à clef about the end of her marriage to the journalist Carl Bernstein. The book — Ephron’s first and only novel — was a best-seller.

Nora Ephron’s novel ‘Heartburn’ still scorches 40 years later The book, a roman à clef about her messy breakup with Carl Bernstein, is a classic of literary revenge ...

Wilde is not so subtly taking a page out of Nora Ephron's book Heartburn, which chronicles the writer's messy divorce from Carl Bernstein. By Mark Peikert Published: Oct 21, 2022 10:10 AM EDT ...

That was [inspired by] Nora’s marriage to Carl Bernstein. I was five years old and I am sleeping on some guy’s lap at a wedding.

Ephron wrote her first novel, “Heartburn,” after discovering that her second husband, the journalist Carl Bernstein, was cheating on her while she was pregnant.

n 1976, when she was a columnist at Esquire magazine, Nora Ephron was in Vermont, working on a story about a professor who had been fired from Bennington College as a result of her “brave stand ...