Julie Powell

Amherst alum, Julie Powell, is known for writing about food, which, considering how much we write about food, is something the staff of Her Campus Amherst can relate to.  Powell grew up in Austin, Texas.  She graduated from Amherst in 1995, a double major in theater and English. 
 
 
In August 2002, Powell began the Julie/Julia Project.  The goal of the project, as those of you who saw the movie Julie and Julia know, was to cook her way through all of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.  In her tiny New York apartment, Powell cooked her way through 524 recipes in 365 days, and blogged about it.  Her blog gained a huge following.  She eventually turned that experience into a book, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.
 
 
Julie Powell is proof of the power of blogging!  (That’s why you should join the staff of Her Campus Amherst!)  She says that her blog helped her to find herself as a writer.  It also landed her with a highly successful book and a movie.  You know you’ve made it big when Amy Adams is playing you on screen.  Powell does say, however, that she is very different from the Julie depicted by Amy Adams on screen.  The Amy Adams Julie is obnoxious and highly narcissistic.  The real Julie didn’t start the blog to get a book deal.  She did it to write and to figure out her life.
 
 
The cool thing about Julie Powell is that she’s living proof that real life post-Amherst can be awesome.  Start blogging.  Even if your blog doesn’t end with a movie being made out of it starring Meryl Streep, you might discover yourself as a writer.  And you never know what could happen.  I’m feeling better about real life already!