“Dying Man Suite,” by Winona author, poet & publisher will roll out at the Historic Chateau Theater

Tuesday, June 30 | 7 – 9 PM
The Historic Chateau Theater
Rochester, MN

Dying Man Suite
Saint Marys Hospital Notebooks 2016-2021
by Tom Driscoll
Rocket Science Press, a Shipwreckt Books imprint, is proud to announce the release of Tom Driscoll’s Hybrid Poetry Collection & Annotated Memoir of Surviving, “Dying Man Suite.”.

Between 2016 and 2021, a period covering more than five years, Driscoll spent sixteen months confined to St. Marys Hospital. This followed a catastrophic heart attack on July 11, 2016, and placement of a Left Ventricle Assist Device, or LVAD, two weeks later, after a team of Mayo Clinic doctors exhausted every other medical attempt to save his life. But not before a team of psychiatrists and social workers reluctantly approved the physically and psychologically stressful mechanical implant for the lifelong writer, publisher, Army veteran, returned Peace Corps Volunteer, former USAID program officer in Francophone Africa, master builder, and recreational athlete.
Six months out, Driscoll went through heart transplant screening, three long days of tests and consultations with specialists from cardiology, nephrology (due to acute kidney failure), dentistry, psychiatry, social work, education, and more tests. The committee officially denied Tom a listing because he would need a double organ transplant–heart and kidneys–which they considered too risky. Instead of landing on the “Bridge to Transplant,” he became a Destination LVAD patient, which Tom called the “Road to Tombstone.”
Surviving with an LVAD is a difficult journey. You have a driveline coming out of your abdomen. A power source tethers you either to external batteries or a fifty-foot transformer cord. You can’t bathe normally. The whirring pump is a constant, mechanical reminder of mortality. Experiencing all of this and more, Tom’s coping mechanism was to retreat into his past, to write about every dog he has ever befriended, to write the poetry of fall and winter, of love and loss, of music, color, light, pain, and dying.
The LVAD reduced Tom to a set of medical data points but introduced him to a marvel of modern engineering—a titanium pump tucked below his damaged heart inside his chest—which gave him time to write “Dying Man Suite,” as well as time to publish sixty other authors and magazines over the past decade; time enough to survive every life-threatening side-effect: internal bleeding, blood clots on the pump, and infection, which ultimately rendered his LVAD “unsustainable,” in the words of a Mayo cardiologist. That same cardiologist asked Tom at age seventy-two if he was interested in a heart transplant. Driscoll passed every test, including extensive assessment of his kidneys. They had improved on the LVAD. Overnight on October 28-29, 2021, Tom Driscoll received the gift of life from a generous donor and donor family.

“Dying Man Suite,” will roll out at the Historic Chateau Theater—nearby the Mayo Clinic downtown Rochester campus—on June 30, 2026, 7-9 p.m. in a conversation/Q&A curated by the multiple-award-winning author of more than a dozen books, former Winona Poet Laureate, Ken McCullough. Joining Ken and I will be the sensational Rochester Poet Laureate, Jean Prokett, and Registered Nurse & poet, Ariel Boswell, who since 2023, has worked as a writer at the bedside with the Dolores Jean Lavins Center for the Humanities where she writes with patients and facilitates workshops with staff and learners. The event will be open to the public.

Tom Driscoll is a fiscal year 2025 recipient of a Creative Individuals grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. The activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Tom is also managing editor at the award-winning Indie press, Shipwreckt Books Publishing company.

Shipwreckt Books is an organizational member of the River Arts Alliance. To learn more about the benefits of membership, please visit: riverartsalliance.org/membership/.