NEW YORK – Among the injustices about the death of Nora Ephron is that she isn’t around to tell us about it.

“She was so, so alive,” said her friend Carrie Fisher. “It makes no sense to me that she isn’t alive anymore.”

Ephron, the essayist, author and filmmaker who challenged and thrived in the male-dominated worlds of movies and journalism and was loved, respected and feared for her devastating and diverting wit, died Tuesday in Manhattan. Her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, announced that she died of leukemia at age 71.