Julie Powell, a chef and blogger whose year-long project to cook each recipe of Julia Child’s groundbreaking cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking became a best-selling memoir that was adapted by Nora Ephron into the hit 2009 film Julie & Julia, died of cardiac arrest Oct.
26 at her home in Upstate New York. She was 49. Her death was reported to The New York Times by her husband Eric Powell. The Julie/Julia Project, as it was called, had its origins in 2002, when Powell, about to turn 30 and, as she once told the Times, had no real career prospects, decided to try her hand in the then-new world of blogging.
Her inspired decision to tackle the difficult and, at the time seemingly old-fashioned, work of Child, along with her approachable and witty writing style, steadily drew a community of both foodies and fans of Powell’s writing.
In 2003, as the project was nearing its self-imposed end, New York Times reporter Amanda Hesser wrote about the Julie/Julia Project and the blog’s readership skyrocketed.
Read more on deadline.com