About the Author

Diane Luby Lane is the founder and executive director of Get Lit-Words Ignite, a Los Angeles-based arts education nonprofit that is transforming the landscape of teen literacy by empowering new generations in literature, self-expression, and performing arts. She is also the founder of the Get Lit Players, an award-winning classic teen poetry troupe that has collaborated with the United Nations, Dove, and Women in the World, and toured at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and the White House, and more, igniting communities across the globe with art and social consciousness. Lane is also the founding producer of Get Lit's Classic Slam, the largest youth classic poetry festival in the world. Lane's Lit Kit, a standards based, in-school curriculum, has been adopted by schools throughout the U.S. and internationally. She is the author of Words of Women (Samuel French) as well as the playwright and star of the critically acclaimed one-woman show Deep Sea Diving (also known as Born Feet First) which toured with iconic Chicano poet and author Jimmy Santiago Baca. Lane is a graduate of the Annenberg Foundation's Alchemy + Leadership Program, a TedX speaker, a Southern California Leadership Network Fellow, a member of Mayor Eric Garcetti's Poet Laureate Committee, and a recipient of the Presidential Lifetime Service Award. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children.

The Get Lit Players are an award-winning classic teen poetry troupe selected from students in the Get Lit program. They perform annually for over 25,000 of their peers, igniting a passion for literacy and social consciousness in schools and communities across the globe. The GLPs have collaborated and performed with the United Nations, the White House, the Kennedy Center, and more. Join the Literary Riot at getlit.org.

Reviews

Nineteen members of a culturally diverse student poetry troupe each share their personal stories, classic poems that have inspired their writing, and a poem written specifically in response to the classic poetry selection. Get Lit was founded on the principle that reading and using classic poems as inspiration for writing new poetry produces "magic, time and time again." This volume aims to share this formula with those who may not be able to attend Get Lit events. Participants' autobiographical essays showcase a range of personal struggles that include familial pressures to be perfect, shattered family dynamics, and bullying, and the book stresses that poetry can be a means of overcoming obstacles. Both the essays and the poetry selections are often emotionally raw, as troupe members explore personal pain and find hope for the future through writing. While the work showcases the fears of a young generation, the pieces also frequently call for self-acceptance, personal empowerment, and social justice. The suggested poems for additional reading are helpful for poetry novices and fanatics alike. The writing prompts included with each chapter are potentially useful, but they also could give the text a "workbook" feel that may alienate some readers. Useful for both those looking to run a poetry-writing workshop or readers looking specifically for advice with their own writing. (Poetry/nonfiction. 12-18)
--Kirkus Reviews (August 15, 2016)

The Get Lit-Words Ignite curriculum engages students through life experience, classic poems, and writing. Students write about their lives, choose a classic or well-known poem, and end by writing a poem of their own creation. This approach gives student writers an outlet for expression, helping them to cope and understand life's heavier issues: poverty, racism, bigotry, mental illness, addiction, and more. Many teen readers and young adults will relate to this material. The students acknowledge that the program has provided them with a sense of purpose and belonging, an emotional outlet, people with which to bond, understanding of others, and responses that are not judgmental. Each section begins with a group poem and includes writing prompts. Brief information about the young poets along with a small photo of each is given, and a bibliography of the classic poems contains ideas for their use rounds out the volume. Recommended--School Library Connection "January/February 2017"

Unless you're a fellow teenager reading the high-school poets featured in this anthology-cum-manual, you
may find their output a bit juvenile--a critique in no way leveled at the young creators, most of whom
have already overcome extremely challenging life scripts. Executive director Lane introduced her poetry
program--in which a student chooses a resonant poem, memorizes it, writes a response, and then performs
both--in LA schools in 2006; it now reaches some 20,000 young people and boasts an astounding track
record. Lane exults: "98 percent of our Get Lit Players [an elite corps chosen by audition] go on to college,
70 percent with merit-based scholarships." Here a score or so budding writers tell their life stories, their
essays followed by their chosen poem and original response, plus thematic prompts that encourage the
reader to try writing themselves. Asking an adolescent to relate "the story of me" is an open invitation to
navel-gazing, but age-mates will find a wealth of relatable material and the occasional gem of a liberating
insight. -- Sandy MacDonald--Booklist "October 15, 2016"

Meet the poets of the heart. Get up close to the sayers of the scars. Listen carefully to these weavers of the light (you get the light by sayin' it the way it is, about where you are really comin' from). Look inside and you'll see how it happens--about being bullied, about your body, how you feel about it, about your parents with all the hurt inside blowin' out of them and you just standing there. And I am just gettin' started. Start with these brave soul searchers and spirit finders. Call it spirit, how do you touch base with your core self? Touch base now. Here. Hold this book and books that got these pioneering torches lit--Bukowski, Francisco X. Alarcón, Adrienne Rich, Sonia Sanchez. See why I am sayin'? There is no book like this one, maybe one--June Jordan's Poetry for the People. Here are the new people. Talking about our new time. It is a critical time. Listen in. Learn it up. Meet, get close, get with it, get lit.--JUAN FELIPE HERRERA, Poet Laureate of the United States

Get Lit Rising is a moving testament to the deep currents of creativity and compassion that flow in the souls of all young people. Too often these currents are silted up by lack of opportunity at home and school. This marvelous bounty of personal stories, inspired poems, and practical advice reveals (again) how heartfelt experience of the arts in education can transform, ennoble, and even save young lives. It shows too how helping young people to engage more deeply with the world within them opens them up to more profound relationships with those around them: how poetry and passion can nurture compassion. A beautiful, inspiring and important book for young people everywhere and for their parents and teachers too.--KEN ROBINSON, educator and author, Creative Schools: Revolutionizing Education From The Ground Up

Get Lit Rising is more than a poetry anthology. It is an astonishing window into what it means to be a young person in America right now. As such, it is also a mirror, and I can't think of a more meaningful reading experience.--JEFF HOBBS, New York Times bestselling author of The Short & Tragic Life of Robert Peace

Poetry-lovers, cool cats, friends of youth, teachers, secret writers, anyone suffering any kind of gloom or remorse or longing for your own voice to be stronger... stand in line to buy this book! Get Lit Rising by Diane Luby Lane and her gorgeous Get Lit Players is the most passionate, brilliant testament to poetry and its wide radiance that I have seen in years. This is a book borne from the hearts, souls, and minds of many, an encouragement toward true connection and modeling on what you respect... a shining lamp to light your way.--NAOMI SHIHAB NYE, Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets

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