Julie Powell, meals blogger from Nora Ephron’s ‘Julie & Julia,’ dies of cardiac arrest at 49

Powell died of cardiac arrest Oct. 26 at her residence in upstate New York, The New York Instances reported. Her loss of life was confirmed by Judy Clain, Powell’s e mail and editor in chief of Little, Brown.

“She was a superb author and a daring, unique individual and he or she won’t be forgotten,” Clain mentioned in a press release. ”We’re sending our deepest condolences to all who knew and cherished Julie, whether or not personally or by way of the deep connections she solid with readers of her memoirs.”

Powell’s 2005 ebook “Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Residence Kitchen” grew to become the hit, Nora Ephron-directed movie “Julie & Julia,” with the creator portrayed within the film by Amy Adams and Meryl Streep as Baby.

Her sophomore and final effort — titled “Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession” — was a bit jarring in its honesty. Powell revealed she had an affair, the ache of loving two males directly, of her fondness for sadomasochism and even a bout of self-punishing intercourse with a stranger.

“Individuals coming from the film ‘Julie & Julia’ and choosing up ‘Cleaving’ are going to be in for some emotional whiplash,” she advised The Related Press in 2009. “I don’t imagine it’s going to be a Nora Ephron film.”

Powell started her affair in 2004 as she was placing the ending touches on her first ebook, a time she writes when she was “starry-eyed and vaguely discontented and had an excessive amount of time on my palms.”

By 2006, she had landed an apprenticeship at a butcher store two hours north of New York Metropolis, which supplied an escape from her crumbling marriage and a spot to discover her childhood curiosity with butchers.

“The way in which they held a knife of their hand was like an extension of themselves,” she mentioned. “I’m a really clumsy individual. I don’t play sports activities. That sort of bodily ability is actually overseas to me, and I’m actually envious of that.”

The ebook explores the hyperlink between butchering and her personal tortured romantic life. At one level, whereas chopping the connective tissue on a pig’s leg, she writes: “It’s unhappy, however a reduction as effectively, to know that two issues so intently certain collectively can separate with so little violence, leaving easy surfaces as a substitute of bloody shreds.”

Her ebook tapped into the rising curiosity in old style butchery and her expertise slicing meat really resulted in her consuming much less of it. She was an advocate for humanely raised and slaughtered animals.

“Individuals wish to get their palms soiled. Individuals wish to take part within the course of. Individuals wish to know the place their meals is coming from,” Powell mentioned. “Individuals don’t need the thriller anymore.”

She is survived by her husband, Eric.

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