Casey Ryan McIntyre, a Tenafly alumna and New York City book publisher who contributed to the creation and publicity campaigns of numerous award-winning Young Adult books, died on Nov. 12 at her home in New York. She was 38.
She announced her death through a post shared on both X and Instagram, which was published by her husband, Andrew Gregory: “A note to my friends: If you’re reading this I have passed away. I’m so sorry, it’s horseshit and we both know it. The cause was stage-four ovarian cancer. I loved each and every one of you with my whole heart and I promise you, I knew how deeply I was loved.”
McIntyre spent her teenage years as a creative writer and a competitive swimmer. A lover of books, she showed great interest and merit in writing in high school.
“Casey was fun to have in Creative Writing,” Mr. Whitehead, who was McIntyre’s Creative Writing teacher, said. “She had a great sense of humor. She was very enthusiastic about every assignment I gave her. I just remember her as a very fun, vibrant, and skilled creative writer.”
After graduating from Tenafly High School in 2003, McIntyre studied creative writing and music at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA, where she wrote and edited for the school newspaper. Following her graduation in 2007, McIntyre attended the Denver Publishing Institute, and in the same year, became the publicist’s assistant at Penguin Young Readers, where she worked with authors like Marie Lu and Loren Long. Throughout her career at Penguin and HarperCollins Children’s Books, McIntyre conducted the publicity campaigns of numerous best-selling books, such as Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy series, Morgan Rhodes’ Falling Kingdom series, Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, Derek Blasberg’s Classy, and Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan. In 2014, McIntyre joined Razorbill at Penguin Random House as an associate publisher, and became the team’s vice president in 2018. As such, she knew the exact elements to target to make a book appealing to the public.
“I am constantly focused on planning and executing publicity campaigns that feel dynamic and extraordinary,” she told Publishers Weekly in 2015. “It’s not just about a few key media hits—it’s about identifying the touch points for a book’s audience and engaging with those readers across a variety of platforms.”
McIntyre married Andrew Gregory, a member of The Gregory Brothers, a musical quartet, in 2015. The couple’s daughter, Grace, was born in 2022.
McIntyre was diagnosed with cancer in 2019. After a long time being hospitalized at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, McIntyre spent the last six months of her life in home hospice. According to Gregory, she “found glimmers of joy in the mundane, even when the cancer didn’t let her stomach keep down any food during the last weeks of the terminal illness.”
However, McIntyre wasn’t just a warm soul during her life. In honor of her life and to help others, she started a campaign in collaboration with RIP Medical Debt, a non-profit organization in which each donation relieves “about 100 times its value in medical debt.”
“I am so lucky to have had access to the best medical care at @MSKCancerCenter and am keenly aware that so many in our country don’t have access to good care,” read McIntyre’s post on X.
As of the last check on Nov. 30, the campaign has raised approximately $830,000, about $60,000 away from reaching the fundraiser’s goal of $888,888.
“Me and Casey’s family are stunned,” Gregory told The New York Times. “We’re overwhelmed, and it’s been really powerful to see the response to people wanting to eliminate strangers’ medical debt.”
A memorial for McIntyre will be held on Dec. 2 in New York.
The Echo encourages donations to Casey McIntyre’s Memorial & Debt Jubilee campaign.
