NEW YORK (AP) — Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author and essayist renowned for her poetic explorations of nature, love, spirituality and the art of writing in the “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” “The Maytrees” and numerous other works, has died. She was 81.
Her literary agent, Rob McQuilkin, said Dillard died Tuesday of natural causes at her home in South Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
Starting in the mid-1970s, Dillard completed a wide range of books, from the poetry collection “Tickets for a Prayer Wheel” to what she would call the “jolly journalism” of “Encounters with Chinese Writers” to the novel of marriage, “The Maytrees,” a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner award in 2008. Seven years later, President Barack Obama presented her with a National Humanities Medal for her “profound reflections on human life and nature.”
Born Meta Ann Doak, she was a Pittsburgh native who in the 1987 memoir “An American Childhood” looked back at her early years and on her uniquely curious mind. She was raised by nonconformists who gave her a wide range to learn and to discover, and she remembered with awe her growing sense of knowledge and self-knowledge. Resistant for much of her life to organized religion, she would find the eternal in animals, mountains, her mother’s skin and in everyday objects. At age 13, she wrote, she was reading “books on drawing, painting, rocks, criminology, birds, moths, beetles, stamps, ponds and streams, medicine.”
Dillard had yet to turn 30 when “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” established her as a major, new literary voice and heir to Henry David Thoreau as a sensitive and idiosyncratic observer of the natural world. Published in 1974 and winner of the Pulitzer for nonfiction, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” drew upon Dillard's private writings about the surroundings of her home in Roanoke, Virginia. Invoking Thoreau, about whom she wrote her master's thesis at Hollins College, she called her book “a meteorological journal of the mind,” in which she would explore “some of the sights of this rather tamed valley.”
“I am no scientist,” she wrote, likening herself to “an infant who has just learned to hold his head up” and gaze about “in bewilderment.”
“He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to learn. In a couple of years, what he will have learned instead is how to fake it: he'll have the cocksure air of a squatter who has come to feel he owns the place,” she wrote.
Dillard taught for more than 20 years at Wesleyan University before retiring in 2002. She was married three times, most recently to the late literary biographer Robert Richardson, whom she met after sending him a fan letter admiring his biography of Thoreau. She had one child, Cody, with second husband Gary Clevidence. Her first husband was creative writing teacher Richard Dillard, whom she divorced in 1975 after 10 years of marriage.
FILE - President Barack Obama awards the 2014 National Humanities Medal to author Annie Dillard of Key West, Fla., during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, on Sept. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
FILE - President Barack Obama appears with author Annie Dillard, recipient of the 2014 National Humanities Medal, during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington on Sept. 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A motorist was arrested on suspicion of murder charges after authorities say she slammed her SUV into a city bus in Los Angeles, killing at least two people and injuring six others in a prelude to a second deadly tragedy: the fiery crash of a TV news helicopter used by NBC and Telemundo that was covering the collision.
Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, of Simi Valley, was arrested Monday night and is being held at a Los Angeles jail with bail set at $4 million, police said. Information on a lawyer who could speak on her behalf wasn’t immediately available.
NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter — reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw — were killed when the chopper went down Tuesday in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley north of downtown. A person on the ground, identified as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died in a parking lot, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
The crash happened as news crews were reporting on the collision involving an SUV that slammed into the bus.
There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter crash, but an alarm could be heard sounding inside the helicopter's cockpit as it lost altitude in the final seconds of video the crew broadcast before the crash.
Just after the beeping noise starts, a woman’s voice says “uh oh.” The helicopter moves quickly away from the bus crash site and starts losing altitude. The woman says “You can’t pull up?” before the video stops as the chopper nears the ground.
The helicopter, a Eurocopter AS350, went down near a large storage facility. At least four cars and two storage containers burned after the helicopter caught fire. NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was at the bus scene and saw black smoke and rushed to the helicopter crash site.
The station identified the helicopter crash victims as Moreno, a familiar voice for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 during the station’s aerial coverage, and Marciniw. Both were employees of Angel City Air, which operated the chopper for the station.
Moreno, born in Orange County, joined Angel City Air in 2010, the same year she earned a broadcast journalism and political science degree from Chapman University. She reported for several news outlets and began flying with Marciniw in 2023, the NBC4 website said.
Marciniw grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974.
“I think a lot of us are still trying to process what happened, this terrible loss,” NBC4 reporter Lauren Coronado told viewers early Wednesday as she stood near the crash site. A hazmat crew was cleaning up jet fuel, she said.
In a tribute to Moreno and Marciniw, the newscast referred to them as “the team in the sky,” saying Moreno would often post videos from her job and was in awe of the view. Anchor Lynette Romero held a colleague’s hand and wiped away tears after hearing Moreno’s voice when one of her posts was played.
In an interview with the station, Esteban Jimenez, a pilot, said he had known Marciniw since the 1990s. He said Marciniw had been his instructor.
“I just talked to him on Sunday. We were talking about the aviation business and retiring,” he said.
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the helicopter in the air.
“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.
Guzzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again much like a breeze turns a windmill. Doing that can create a bit of lift that could help cushion the impact, but Guzzetti said there would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.
There are risks to news helicopters particularly in a major city like Los Angeles where multiple helicopters respond to an incident, but the pilots all coordinate closely over the radio to ensure they maintain a safe distance from each other. The industry also shares best practices to help keep these news flights safe.
“It’s a very unique form of flying. And the community is very good about lessons learned," Guzzetti said. “And so because of that, you don’t hear about too many of those accidents. So they’re rare, but they do occur, just because the mission is a risky one.”
NBC4 and Telemundo 52 Los Angeles said in a statement they “are deeply saddened” and extended “heartfelt condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of those who lost their lives.”
“Losing five Angelenos is very painful,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said. “And I know this community of Chatsworth, hit hard, will be grieving for some time.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom thanked the emergency crews responding to both crashes and said in a post on X that “our hearts are with the victims and families.”
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration said personnel will arrive Wednesday to begin an investigation into the cause of the helicopter crash.
The station said this is the second aviation tragedy in its history.
In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator. The pilot, former U.S. Air Force officer Francis Gary Powers, had been in the news years earlier when he was shot down and captured while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union for the CIA, an ordeal portrayed in the movie “Bridge of Spies.”
There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, killing 16 people, according to a review of federal accident records and news accounts. They include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter used by Philadelphia station WPVI and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina, interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist during a training flight for WBTV.
This story has been updated to correct that Marciniw, not Moreno, graduated from Burbank High School and to correct the spelling of Jeff Guzzetti's last name.
Golden reported from Seattle. AP Transportation Writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to this report.
In this aerial view, people investigate the aftermath of a news helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, on Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026.(AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
A police officer works the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
An aerial view of the aftermath of a news helicopter that crashed in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass attends a news conference at the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass joined by other officials walk to a news conference near the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Two people hug each other behind police lines at the scene of a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass talks during a news conference at the scene after a helicopter crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows first responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows firefighters respond to a deadly bus crash, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
In this still image provided by KABC-TV shows a helicopter that crashed near a deadly bus crash, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (KABC-TV via AP)
First responders work the scene after a helicopter crashed near a bus crash in Chatsworth, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)
