Julie Powell, food writer behind 'Julie & Julia,' dead at 49 - CNN

CNN  — 

Julie Powell, a bestselling writer who chronicled her efforts to hole each look successful Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which aboriginal inspired the movie “Julie & Julia,” died Oct. 26 astatine her location successful New York. She was 49.

Her decease was confirmed to the New York Times by her husband, Eric Powell, who said the origin was cardiac arrest.

Powell’s publication was turned into a 2009 movie directed by Nora Ephron, with Meryl Streep playing Julia Child and Amy Adams successful the relation of Powell herself.

CNN has reached retired to the influential nutrient writer’s steadfast for comment.

“Julie & Julia” began arsenic a blog connected Salon.com successful which Powell, seeking an outlet from her humdrum beingness arsenic a temp successful downtown Manhattan soon aft 9/11, embarked connected a home-cooking odyssey to successfully propulsion disconnected each 524 recipes successful Child’s classical French cookbook implicit the people of 1 twelvemonth successful her tiny Astoria, Queens kitchen.

The resulting memoir, “Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen,” came aft the blog gained a loyal pursuing that was anxious to stock successful Powell’s successes and failures arsenic she endeavored to hole challenging dishes similar Boeuf Bourguignon and a deboned duck for Canard en Croûte.

Since the occurrence of that bestselling book, Powell went connected to constitute 1 much successful 2009, “Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession.”

More recently, she returned to Salon earlier this twelvemonth to constitute a bid of commentary pieces astir the Food Network bid “The Julia Child Challenge.”

“She genuinely made her ain lane,” Salon elder writer Mary Elizabeth Williams, who antecedently managed Open Salon, the level that hosted Powell’s blog, said of the writer. “We were fortunate capable to beryllium the conduit.”

At the halfway of Powell’s blog, and aboriginal the acclaimed movie that utilized it arsenic a base, was the writer’s admiration for Julia Child’s cooking and mode of life.

“Julia taught maine what it takes to find your mode successful the world. It’s not what I thought it was,” Powell wrote. “I thought it was each astir — I don’t know, assurance oregon volition oregon luck. Those are each immoderate bully things to have, nary question. But there’s thing else, thing that these things turn retired of. It’s joy.”