Julie Powell, Food Writer Known for ‘Julie & Julia,’ Dies at 49 - The New York Times

Julie Powell, the writer whose determination to walk a twelvemonth cooking each look successful Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” led to the fashionable nutrient blog, the Julie/Julia Project, a movie starring Meryl Streep and a caller pursuing for Mrs. Child successful the last years of her life, died connected Oct. 26 astatine her location successful Olivebridge, successful upstate New York. She was 49.

Her husband, Eric Powell, said the origin was cardiac arrest.

Ms. Powell narrated her struggles successful the room successful a funny, lacerating dependable that struck a nervus with a rising procreation of disaffected contemporaries.

The Julie/Julia Project became a fashionable exemplary for different blogs, replicated by fans of the cooks Ina Garten, Thomas Keller and Dorie Greenspan, and helped physique the immense modern assemblage for location cooking connected societal media.

In 2002, Ms. Powell was an aspiring writer moving astatine a low-level administrative occupation successful Lower Manhattan. She was astir to crook 30 and had nary existent vocation prospects. It was, she said successful an interrogation with The New York Times, “one of those panicked, backed-into-a-corner benignant of moments.”

To lend operation to her days, she acceptable retired to navigator each 524 recipes from her mother’s well-worn transcript of Mrs. Child’s 1961 classical “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1.” But arsenic an untrained navigator who lived successful a tiny Long Island City loft, she recovered the roadworthy to beryllium long, sweaty and bumpy.

In a blog for Salon.com that she called the Julie/Julia Project, she wrote agelong updates, punctuated by vodka gimlets and filled with entertaining, profane tirades astir the difficulties of uncovering ingredients, the insignificant disappointments of big beingness and the bigger challenges of uncovering intent arsenic a subordinate of Generation X.

Before the twelvemonth was up, Salon reported that the blog had astir 400,000 full leafage views, arsenic good arsenic respective 1000 regular readers who hung connected the play of whether Ms. Powell would really decorativeness successful time.

Blogging made it imaginable for Ms. Powell to scope readers connected a comparatively caller level and successful a caller benignant of nonstop language. “We person a mean wherever we tin benignant successful the snarky comments we utilized to conscionable accidental retired large to our friends,” she said successful a 2009 interview.

Those comments were posted conscionable arsenic fashionable involvement successful food, cooking and chefs was rising. Ms. Powell’s self-deprecating benignant became a span from the authorization of nutrient writers similar Mrs. Child, James Beard and M.F.K. Fisher to the accessibility of Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson.

Just weeks earlier Ms. Powell’s self-imposed deadline was up, Amanda Hesser, a laminitis of the website Food52 who was past a newsman for The Times, wrote astir her project, and involvement exploded.

The Julie/Julia Project upended nutrient writing, Ms. Hesser said successful an email. “I’d ne'er work anyone similar her,” she wrote. “Her penning was truthful fresh, spirited — sometimes crude! — and truthful gloriously unmoored to immoderate tradition.”

Ms. Powell inspired different amateur nutrient writers to statesman cooking their mode done cookbooks and made nonrecreational nutrient writers recognize “they’d been stuck successful the mud of conformity,” Ms. Hesser said. “The net democratized nutrient writing, and Julie was the caller school’s archetypal distinctive voice.”

The writer Deb Perelman, who started her nutrient blog (now called Smitten Kitchen) successful 2003, said: “She wrote astir nutrient successful a truly quality dependable that sounded similar radical I knew. She communicated that you could constitute astir nutrient adjacent without going to culinary school, without overmuch experience, and successful a real-life kitchen.”

Little, Brown & Company turned the blog into a book, “Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.” Although immoderate critics wrote that it lacked literate heft, it went connected to merchantability much than a cardinal copies, mostly nether the rubric fixed to the paperback: “Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.”

Ms. Powell “was blessed for the communicative to beryllium Nora Ephron’s story,” said Mr. Powell, a lawman exertion astatine Archaeology magazine. “It did benignant of soil down the quirky and the spiky and a batch of the things everyone knew her for and loved her for. And she was OK with that.”

The film’s occurrence besides lifted Mrs. Child’s publication to the best-seller database for the archetypal time.

Mrs. Child ne'er saw the movie — she died successful 2004 — but she was acquainted with Ms. Powell’s project.

Russ Parsons, a erstwhile Los Angeles Times nutrient exertion who was among the first to study connected the blog, sent Mrs. Child, past successful her 90s, immoderate excerpts. She took the task arsenic an affront, not the self-deprecating romp that Ms. Powell intended, and told Mr. Parsons that she and others had tested and retested the recipes truthful they would beryllium accessible to cooks of each accomplishment levels.

“I don’t recognize however she could person problems with them,” helium recalled her telling him. “She conscionable indispensable not beryllium overmuch of a cook.”

Julie Foster was calved connected April 20, 1973, successful Austin, Texas, to John and Kay Foster. Her begetter was a lawyer. Her parent stayed location to attraction for her and her brother, Jordon, and past went backmost to assemblage for a master’s grade successful plan from the University of Texas.

Ms. Powell graduated from Amherst College successful 1995 with a bachelor’s grade successful theatre and fabrication writing.

As a child, her member said, Ms. Powell was some bookish and dramatic.

“She loved to beryllium onstage, and loved conscionable being implicit the apical and having everyone ticker her,” helium said. And, helium added, she was “the astir experimental and blase navigator among us, and we were each radical who cooked.”

She met the antheral who would go her hubby erstwhile they were playing the romanticist leads successful a precocious schoolhouse accumulation of the Arthur Miller play “All My Sons.” They joined successful 1998.

Ms. Powell’s 2nd book, “Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession,” published successful 2009, dived profoundly into their relationship, which sometimes flourished and sometimes faltered. She described successful item her conflict with an extramarital matter she had and, later, 1 her hubby had. This time, the nutrient transportation was darker: She juxtaposed her apprenticeship arsenic a butcher with a dissection of her moods and the marriage.

Without the sauciness and personage transportation of her archetypal book, “Cleaving” was not arsenic good received, and though Ms. Powell continued writing, it was her past book.

“She had truthful overmuch endowment and affectional intelligence,” said Judy Clain, exertion successful main of Little, Brown, who was Ms. Powell’s editor. “I lone privation she could person recovered the adjacent thing.”

After years splitting clip betwixt Long Island City and a cozy location successful the Catskill Mountains that she purchased successful 2008, the mates moved upstate permanently successful 2018. In summation to her hubby and her brother, Ms. Powell is survived by her parents.

Ms. Powell, who was politically candid and a staunch advocator for animals, maintained her lively dependable connected societal media, a earthy hold for the quirky and nonstop dependable she honed arsenic an aboriginal blogger. On Twitter, she posted pointed commentary, mixed successful with mundane bits of regular life. As ever, she made her feelings public, whether she was depressed, frustrated oregon excited.

Mr. Powell, her husband, erstwhile said to her: “You hatred everyone and you emotion everyone. That is your gift!” She turned it into her Twitter bio.