Antibody

by Elane Kim

84 pages, Paperback

Published February 23, 2026

About the author

Elane Kim is a Korean American writer whose work has been recognized by the National YoungArts Foundation, the Hippocrates Initiative for Poetry and Medicine, and The New York Times, among others. The editor-in-chief of Gaia Lit, she is a 2023 U.S. Presidential Scholar, a 2022 Davidson Fellow in Literature, the winner of the 2021 Columbia Journal Winter Poetry Contest, and the winner of the 2023 Narrative Magazine High School Contest, judged by Naomi Shihab Nye. Her work can be found in Poetry, Electric Literature, One Teen Story, and more. Her story collection, POSTCARDS, was published by Bull City Press in 2022. ANTIBODY, her debut poetry collection, is forthcoming from River River Books in 2026.

Reviews

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

gtfo this is so good. full review to come.

I received an ARC of Antibody from River River Books.

[kath z · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The bravery of searching for sweetness / where there is only dust."

Antibody is a collection that feels like standing in light and realizing just how warm it is.

A remarkable debut by a remarkable poet. I don’t know how to explain how much I love this book without just pressing it into your hands. Kim does something here that feels impossible-- writing about grief, illness and hunger in ways that are bright, tender and devastating all at once. They touch kitchen smoke and laboratory light in the same palm, move effortlessly from small to universal. They hold Appa and Eomma and daughters who are trying, so hard, to translate love.

The language is exact, luminous-- cicadas, ginseng, lemon trees that may or may not bear fruit, hospital rooms washed bone-white. And yet even in the ache, there is always a sense of reaching, this insistence on staying. In "Duplex in San Francisco", Kim writes: "When I say / I am sure, I mean to say I am waiting / for the weeds to grow back."

I will be carrying these poems with me for a very long time. Kim's Antibody is a collection that endures. It is an act of invention, building something radiant out of what was handed down. Searching for sweetness and somehow finding it.

[John P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A triumph of a collection. What I love most about Kim’s writing is how her beautiful prose encourages you to dig deep and really examine your feelings about family. I will come back to this again and again.

[Karen Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

so beautiful and tender :)