Get to know the Get Lit Players—a group of teens who use poetry to take on the world—with this common-core aligned book that sheds light on teen issues through their own poetry and slam poetry performances.

Get Lit Rising brings to life the true story of nineteen teen poets (the Get Lit Players) who are inspiring thousands of teens across the country through their award-winning performances of classic and spoken word poems. This book takes readers inside the private lives of these teen poets as they try to transform the lives of inner city teens in some of the toughest life circumstances. The Get Lit Players include teens who are homeless, autistic, have parents in jail, battle with weight and body issues, depression, and more. But they use the power of poetry to pursue lives of promise and to reach out to friends, families, and communities.

This uplifting book also offers the classic poems that have most inspired the Get Lit Players, along with their own personal response poems, and each chapter offers questions, writing prompts, and how-tos for readers to set their own inner poet free. Ending with a section for parents and educators featuring the curriculum that’s already in schools throughout California, this slam-dunk shows how to get teens excited about poetry and how to create poetry groups and slams in their own communities. This book, this fierce and hungry and gorgeous book, this good weapon in the good fight, this monster under the king’s bed. No other book allows you to meet the poets, the youth, the creators of our future, like this one. Not only are we being let in to the art of these young writers, but we are also learning their backstories, which are as poetic and stunning as the poems themselves. This anthology creates constant conversation and dialogue across all borders, and I know few things more healing and necessary.