Who Was Julie Powell? Food Writer And Blogger Behind Julie & Julia, Passes Away

Food writer Julie Powell, who became an internet sensation after blogging for a year about making every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, leading to a book deal and a film adaptation, has died. She was 49.

Powell died of cardiac arrest on October 26 at her home in upstate New York, The New York Times reported. Her death was confirmed by Judy Clain, Powell’s email and editor-in-chief of Little, Brown.

“She was a brilliant writer and a daring, original person and she will not be forgotten,” Clain said in a statement. ”We are sending our deepest condolences to all who knew and loved Julie, whether personally or through the deep connections she forged with readers of her memoirs.”

She is survived by her husband, Eric.

Who Was Julie Powell?

Powell rose to fame after starting her food blog, the Julie/Julia Project for Salon.com, which chronicled her journey making every one of Child's recipes from the Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume I cookbook.

She started the blog in 2002, and Salon reported that it garnered over 400,000 pageviews by the end of the year, writes Insider.

The blog was then made into a book — Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously — in 2005 and in 2009, it was adapted into a major motion picture — Julie & Julia — starring Meryl Streep as Child and Amy Adams as Powell.

Her sophomore and last effort titled Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession was a bit jarring in its honesty. Powell revealed she had an affair, the pain of loving two men at once, of her fondness for sadomasochism and even a bout of self-punishing sex with a stranger.

“People coming from the movie ‘Julie & Julia’ and picking up ‘Cleaving’ are going to be in for some emotional whiplash,” she told The Associated Press in 2009. “I don’t believe it’s going to be a Nora Ephron movie.”

Powell grew up in Austin, Texas, and she graduated with degrees in theatre and fiction writing from Amherst College in 1995.

She met her husband in high school while participating in a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons, and they married in 1998.

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