Lara Love Hardin is a highly accomplished literary agent, author, and prison reform advocate. She is the current president and founder of True Literary, a literary agency dedicated to supporting and representing a diverse range of authors and their work. Prior to founding True Literary, Hardin was a senior literary agent and co-CEO at Idea Architects.
Hardin has an MFA in creative writing and is a four-time New York Times bestselling collaborative writer. She has worked on notable projects such as the #1 New York Times bestseller "Designing Your Life" and the 2018 Oprah Book Club pick "The Sun Does Shine," which she co-authored 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 and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, as well as being short-listed for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
In addition to her work in literature, Hardin is also the co-founder of The Gemma Project, a gender-responsive organization serving incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women with integrity and compassion. She currently resides in La Selva Beach, California with her husband and is the mother of four children and stepmother to two additional children. She shares her home with five dogs, three cats, twenty-one chickens, and four ducks. Her memoir "THE MANY LIVES OF MAMA LOVE" was published in Summer 2023 by Simon & Schuster and is being adapted as a television comedy series.