Lara Love Hardin is a literary agent, author, prison reform advocate, and president of True Literary. Her memoir, The Many Lives of Mama Love, is a 2024 Oprah Book Club pick and a New York Times best seller. 

Lara has a master’s degree in creative writing and apart from her own book, is also a five-time New York Times best-selling collaborative writer, including the number one New York Times best seller Designing Your Life, and 2018 Oprah Book Club pick, The Sun Does Shine, which she coauthored with Anthony Ray Hinton about his 30 years as an innocent man on Alabama’s death row. 

In 2019, she won a Christopher Award for her work “affirming the highest values of the human spirit,” was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and was short-listed for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Lara is cofounder of The Gemma Project, a gender-responsive organization serving incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women with integrity and compassion.