Derecka Purnell, Anuradha Bhowmik, Rabia Chaudry, Tajja Isen, Jacinda Townsend are just a few of the hundreds of authors from around the world gathering together in downtown Miami for Miami Book Fair 2022, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They, along with Patti Smith, Tia Williams, Sandra Cisneros, Lisa Genova are so looking forward to sharing their work, thoughts and new ideas with everyone in person, and streamed Live From the Fair, from Sunday, November 13 through Sunday, Nov. 20. Please visit miamibookfair for more information, for follow MBF at @miamibookfair #miamibookfair2021

 As a voice actor, writer, and newly appointed editor in chief of Catapult magazine, Tajja Isen is no stranger to the power and function of language—how words can be loaded or empty, insightful or incendiary, manipulated or manipulative. In her daily life and in the world around her, Isen has traced a pattern that, by now, should feel familiar to many of us: that the progressive language of inclusion is often used in an attempt to rebrand institutions whose actions often show the opposite. She calls this diversionary tactic “lip service.” In her debut essay collection, SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: Essays on Lip Service (One Signal Publishers; Hardcover; On Sale April 19, 2022;), Tajja Isen articulates the absurdity of living in a world that has grown fluent in the language of social justice but doesn’t always follow through.