LARA LOVE

"As your mentor, I’ll help you wield personal narrative as rocket fuel for your boldest ambitions—clarifying the story at the core of your goal, whether you’re creating or scaling a mission‑driven venture, building a nonprofit, or bringing a book of ideas to life—and converting that story into focused strategies for audience resonance, sustainable funding, measurable impact, and savvy navigation of the publishing landscape. Expect straight‑talk guidance on setting audacious targets, ruthless accountability to what matters most, and a resilience playbook that transforms every setback into forward momentum, all delivered with tough love, radical transparency, and an unshakable conviction that you can author the future you want to live in.

As a literary agent and author who has navigated this industry from multiple angles, I understand the complexities of bringing stories from conception to publication. I will help you develop your authentic voice, teach you the business fundamentals of publishing, and guide you through the practical aspects of manuscript development, agent queries, and industry navigation."

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 bestseller. She has an MFA in creative writing and apart from her own book, is also a five-time New York Times bestselling collaborative writer, including the #1 New York Times bestseller Designing Your Life, and 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 “affirming the highest values of the human spirit,” nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and short-listed for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Lara is also the co-founder of The Gemma Project, a gender-responsive organization serving incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women with integrity and compassion.