Julie Powell The Food Writer Behind Julie Julia Has Died Aged 49

(CNN) — Julie Powell, a bestselling author who chronicled her struggles to prepare every recipe in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” which later inspired the movie “Julie & Julia,” died Oct. 26 at her home in New York.  He was 49.
Her death was confirmed to The New York Times by her husband, Eric Powell, who said the cause was cardiac arrest.
Powell’s book was made into a 2009 film directed by Nora Ephron, with Meryl Streep playing Julia Child and Amy Adams as Powell herself.
CNN has reached out to the influential food writer’s publisher for comment.
“Julie & Julia” began as a blog on Salon.com in which Powell, looking for a way out of her dull life in midtown Manhattan shortly after 9/11, embarked on a home cooking odyssey to successfully pull off all 524 recipes.  in the classic French cookbook Child’s during a year in the small kitchen of Astoria, Queens.
The resulting memoir, “Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen,” came after the blog gained a loyal following willing to share Powell’s successes and failures as she attempted to prepare challenging dishes like Boeuf Bourguignon and a boneless duck for Canard en Croûte.
Since the success of this bestselling book, Powell went on to write another in 2009, ‘Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession’.
Most recently, she returned to Salon earlier this year to write a commentary series for the Food Network series “The Julia Child Challenge.”
“She really carved her own lane,” Salon senior writer Mary Elizabeth Williams, who previously ran Open Salon, the platform that hosts Powell’s blog, said of the author.  “We were lucky enough to be the pipeline.”
At the heart of Powell’s blog, and later the acclaimed film it was based on, was the author’s admiration for Julia Child’s cooking and lifestyle.
“Julia taught me what it takes to make your way in the world. It’s not what I thought it was,” Powell wrote.  “I thought it was all about — I don’t know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there’s something else, something that those things grow out of. It’s a joy.”