Don't Let It Kill You Paperback by Theo LeGros

Product Details

• Publisher: Persea Books (2026-06-02)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 64 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780892556397
• Item Weight: 136.08 grams
• Dimensions: 22.61 x 17.78 x 0.56 cm

Winner of the 2024 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry, Theo LeGro's unflinching debut explores chronic illness, inherited grief, and the brutal, tender intimacy between the body and self.

From hospital rooms to dive bars, Don't Let It Kill You by Theo LeGro confronts the complexities of loss and mortality with ferocity and wit. These poems test the tension between survival and surrender, healing and destruction, where the body is a site of betrayal and forgiveness, pain and longing, where the frailties of the flesh lead to a haunting tenderness toward the self. With language that refuses to flinch or flatter, these poems tells the truth about sickness: How boring it is. How brutal. How sacred. The poems do not seek to inspire. They do not resolve. They testify. Aching and defiant, Don't Let It Kill You refuses to yield or comply, weaving between intergenerational trauma and incurable illness with biting lyricism to explore where desire and fear collide as proof of life and life is its own feral, sacred kind of rebellion. 

About the Author

Theo LeGro is a queer Vietnamese-American poet and Kundiman fellow whose work has earned nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. Their work appears or will appear in Blood Orange Review, Brooklyn Poets, diode, Honey Literary, Plume, The Offing, Raleigh Review, and others. They live in Brooklyn.