Lillian Ross was born Lillian Rosovsky in Syracuse, New York on June 8, 1918. She received a bachelor's degree from Hunter College in New York and later did graduate work at Cornell University. Her first job in journalism was as a reporter for the New York tabloid PM. In 1945, she started working for The New Yorker and worked there for more than six decades. Her last writing for the magazine appeared online in 2012 as a blog post about J. D. Salinger. Her last New Yorker article in print was a Talk of the Town piece in 2011 about the comedian and actor Robin Williams.
Her article describing John Huston's effort to make a film of The Red Badge of Courage was reprinted as a book entitled Picture in 1952. She wrote several books about journalism including Reporting and Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism. She also wrote a memoir entitled Here but Not Here: A Love Story, which described her 50-year love affair with editor of The New Yorker William Shawn and a collection of her journalism entitled Reporting Always. She died from a stroke on September 20, 2017 at the age of 99.
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