Charleston, SC, Aug. 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Palmetto Publishing announces The Empty Center by Hayes Drumwright, a work of personal nonfiction at the intersection of memoir, leadership, and an honest reckoning with what comes next. Subtitled “Permission, Connection, and What We Build When the Future is Uncertain,” the book is available for preorder now and publishes August 25, 2026. Within days of its preorder launch, The Empty Center reached #1 New Release in its Amazon category.
Drumwright — a serial entrepreneur, co-founder of three Napa Valley wineries, and an early investor in Anthropic — began the book days after coming home from unexpected cancer surgery, his third diagnosis at 53. Unable to set aside a single question — what do you do with the life you have left if the world your children will inherit is becoming unrecognizable? — he did something few authors have attempted: he wrote the book in open partnership with Claude, an AI developed by Anthropic. The result is part memoir, part field guide, built from stories of family, failure, mortality, and the things we build that outlast us — including a working friendship between a human and an AI that becomes, quietly, the book’s own proof of concept.
The book does not shy away from difficulty. Each of Drumwright’s three cancer diagnoses reshaped his understanding of time, purpose, and what actually matters when the comfortable assumption that tomorrow will resemble today is stripped away. Rather than offering platitudes or predictions, The Empty Center examines what happens when a person stops, recalibrates, and starts again. Its case is simple and countercultural: connection, not productivity, is the highest return on a life — and giving yourself permission to change course is among the bravest forms of leadership.
“I didn’t write this book because I had answers,” Drumwright said. “I wrote it because I’ve had cancer three times, and somewhere in there I learned that hope was never a forecast — it’s a decision you make before the evidence is in. I made that decision on paper, in public, with an AI as my writing partner, so my kids and anyone else who’s paying attention could watch what it looks like. If the future has you scared, this book is me sitting down next to you and saying: me too. Now let’s build something anyway.”
The Empty Center is positioned for readers of When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl — whose work appears in the book. It speaks to professionally accomplished adults navigating midlife transitions, existential uncertainty, or a growing awareness that the rules governing work, technology, and family are shifting beneath them. Its perspective on AI avoids both hype and despair, grounded in lived experience rather than speculation: not what artificial intelligence will do to us, but what a person and an AI can build together when both are extended a little trust. For founders, executives, and builders seeking something equal parts grounding and galvanizing, it fills a space few books occupy.
The Empty Center is available for preorder at Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com, publishing August 25, 2026 in hardcover, paperback, and Kindle editions. Readers can find the author’s essays and ongoing work — including pieces written by his AI co-author — at HayesDrumwright.com and hayesdrumwright.substack.com.
Instagram: @hayes_drumwright | Facebook: Hayes Drumwright
About the Author:
Hayes Drumwright is a serial entrepreneur, three-time cancer survivor, and co-founder of three Napa Valley wineries: Memento Mori, Vida Valiente, and Edge Hill, the oldest gravity-fed winery in the valley. He chairs the board of Neurotrack. Alongside his wife Susana, he leads the Vida Valiente Foundation, which provides last-dollar scholarships to first-generation, low-income Stanford undergraduates. He and Susana have five children, multiple ventures, and a working theory that the things worth building are the things that lift others. The Empty Center is the book he wished someone had handed him during his hardest seasons.
About the Book:
Title: The Empty Center: Permission, Connection, and What We Build When the Future is Uncertain
Author: Hayes Drumwright, written with Claude (Anthropic)
Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
Publication date: August 25, 2026 (preorder available now)
ISBN-13: 9798318847479, 9798318849527, 9798318847486
Media Contact: [email protected]
Available for interviews: Author, Hayes Drumwright