September 20, 2017 at 2:09 pm | By HILLEL ITALIE

NEW YORK (AP) - Lillian Ross, the ever-watchful New Yorker reporter whose close narrative style defined a memorable and influential 70-year career, including a revealing portrait of Ernest Hemingway, a classic Hollywood expose and a confession to an adulterous affair, has died at age 99.

Ross died early Wednesday at Lenox Hill Hospital after suffering a stroke, New Yorker articles editor Susan Morrison said Wednesday. In an email statement to The Associated Press, New Yorker editor David Remnick called Ross a groundbreaking writer.

"Lillian would knock my block off for saying so, she'd find it pretentious, but she really was a pioneer, both as a woman writing at The New Yorker and as a truly innovative artist, someone who helped change and shape non-fiction writing in English," Remnick wrote.

Hundreds of Ross' "Talk of the Town" dispatches appeared in The New Yorker, starting in the 1940s when she wrote about Harry Truman's years as a haberdasher, and continuing well into the 21st century, whether covering a book party at the Friars Club, or sitting with the daughters of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II as they watched a Broadway revival of "South Pacific." After the death of J.D. Salinger in 2010, Ross wrote a piece about her friendship with the reclusive novelist and former New Yorker contributor.