Debra Booton McCoy
Debra Booton McCoy is an American Catholic writer, editor, publisher, and optometrist from central New York. She is the founder of Lanternarius Press, a small Catholic publishing company, and has written on Catholic history, saints, and the papacy for Catholic365 and other Catholic websites.
Early life and education
McCoy was born in upstate New York and spent much of her life in the northeastern United States. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in biology from Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, and later received a doctorate in optometry from the New England College of Optometry in Boston.
According to her publisher biography, McCoy worked for more than thirty years in optometry while also writing on Catholic religious and historical subjects.
Writing career
McCoy has written essays and articles on Catholic topics, including saints, papal history, Catholic family life, and religious tradition. Catholic365 lists her as a contributor and describes her as a Catholic writer from central New York. Her articles on the site include a long-running series on the lives of the popes.
In 2016, New Evangelizers described McCoy as a published author who had written a column for a women's monthly newspaper in the mid-1990s and had published her first book in 2014.
Lanternarius Press
McCoy founded Lanternarius Press, a small Catholic publishing company, in the 2010s. The company describes its purpose as publishing books that explain Catholic Christian morals and values to a new generation.
Through Lanternarius Press, McCoy edited and published A Catholic Mother Speaks to Her Children, an English EDition of a nineteenth-century Catholic work by Marie Catherine Sophie de Flavigny, Countess d'Agoult. She also edited and published Conferences for Boys, a work by Father Reynold Kuehnel.
McCoy later began writing a series on the history of the popes, using material from her Catholic365 articles. The first volume, The History of the Popes, 34 AD–499 AD, covers the early papacy.
Personal life
McCoy is married to Robert McCoy and has two children. She is a niece of the Rev. Joseph N. Sestito, a Catholic priest and retired U.S. Navy chaplain from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ogdensburg. She was marred to United States Air Force Captain Robert Moore and Michael Cucchiara, before divorcing.
Selected works
- A Catholic Mother Speaks to Her Children, editor, Lanternarius Press, 2014
- Conferences for Boys, editor, Lanternarius Press
- The History of the Popes, 34 AD–499 AD