Katherine Russell Rich, Who Wrote of Cancer Fight, Dies at 56 Katherine Russell Rich, whose gritty, darkly comic memoir of her protracted battle with breast cancer became a beacon for other patients, died of the disease on Tuesday. She was 56, and against all predictions had lived with cancer for nearly a quarter-century. The death was confirmed by a friend, Emma Sweeney. In "The Red Devil: To Hell With Cancer - and Back," published in 1999, Ms. Rich chronicles finding a lump in her breast in 1988, when she was 32. An editor at GQ magazine at the time, she had ended her marriage just three weeks earlier. She goes on to chart her odyssey through a parallel universe she calls Cancerland, where she encounters insensitive doctors (one dropped her, calling her difficult), obtuse psychotherapists (one told her that her health problems were rooted in childhood), unsupportive support groups (one was run by someone with a mail-order divinity degree) and even less supportive bosses (one, apparently discomforted by Ms. Rich's cancer, fired her). She had a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, and the cancer seemed to remit. But as her book recounts, it returned with a vengeance in 1993, just after she had begun a job at Allure magazine. This time the cancer was Stage 4 - the most advanced stage possible. It spread to her spine, breaking her bones and leaving her temporarily paralyzed. She was told she would live a year or two at most. Over time, Ms. Rich underwent a number of additional treatments, including more chemotherapy and radiation, hormone therapy and, in 1995, a bone-marrow transplant. In the book, she describes the exquisite irony of working at Allure, with its emphasis on the feminine ideal, while being bald for long periods. The treatments bought her more time. As Ms. Rich recounted, they also gave her the courage to quit editing and become a writer. "The Red Devil" received wide attention in the news media and inspired an outpouring of support from fellow cancer patients. Reviewers praised the book's unsentimental voice and unflinching candor. Ms. Rich's pugnacious engagement with her illness even gave her the fortitude, she said, to move to India for a year to learn Hindi. Her sojourn there, begun in 2001, is recounted in a second memoir, "Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language," published in 2009. Though there was no oncologist around for hundreds of miles, she wrote, her cancer was largely manageable during her time there. Ms. Rich wrote about her experience with cancer, and her life in India, in first-person articles in The New York Times and elsewhere. "Here, you live among outlaws, your body's own cells," she wrote in an essay in O: The Oprah Magazine in June 2010. Whole phalanxes of them turn mutinous, become silent killers. This is a country that's both narrow and vast, where geography bends at the edges and landmarks vanish like Cheshire cats. "Oh, we don't use that drug anymore," a doctor will say, five minutes after the drug was invented. So you have to become your own cartographer, make your own way. Katherine Russell Rich, known as Kathy, was born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., on Nov. 17, 1955. She earned a bachelor's degree in religious studies from Syracuse University. Ms. Rich's marriage to Diego Olivé ended in divorce. Survivors include a brother, Stuart P. Rich Jr., and a sister, Lucy Harrison. In the Oprah Magazine essay, Ms. Rich explored her decision to forsake editing for freelance writing. "When I was told I was going to die, I was shredded to realize I hadn't made any real difference," she wrote. She added, "The life of a writer was uncertain, but as a writer, it seemed, I might leave a mark."