Please join Berkeley Judicial Institute and Moderator Judge Laurel Beeler for what promises to be an uplifting discussion. Lara Love Hardin will talk about her compelling and best-selling memoir, The Many Lives of Mama Love. Co-founders Lara Love Hardin and Cynthia Chase will talk about The Gemma Project a reimagined gender-responsive reentry program like the one that helped Lara on her path to healing. Please let us know your questions!

​Lara Love Hardin is a literary agent, a writer, a NYT best selling author - and her memoir, The Many Loves of Mama Love was recently selected for Oprah's Book Club.

​The Gemma Project, mentioned in her memoir and re-imagined today, was born out of a need to provide gender-responsive and trauma-responsive re-entry and in-custody programming and services as women rejoin communities after incarceration. These programs reduce recidivism and help create healthier communities.

​This Book Talk Fundraiser is being hosted by Jessye Kass in an effort to:

• ​Gather virtually to meet a spectacular author after reading her memoir and join in the unique experience of asking her questions.

• ​Raise funds for the Gemma Project, an organization that supports women and non-binary individuals impacted by the justice-system. Donations are optional, but highly encouraged. Donations will be used to launch the model site program in California.

Join us for a book talk & signing and to learn how cities, counties, and states across the country can start a Gemma Project in their own communities.

Harvard Book Store welcomes LARA LOVE HARDIN—founder of True Literary Agency—to discuss her new memoir The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing. She will be joined in conversation by former US Secret Service agent EVY POUMPOURAS.

Lara Love Hardin + Mallory Edens: The Many Lives of Mama Love

Thursday August 03 07:00PM-08:00PM ET

Join us for an in-person event with literary agent, author and prison reform advocate Lara Love Hardin, for the release of her new memoir The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing. Joining Lara in conversation is model, writer and producer Mallory Edens. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

Purchase Tickets Here

Can’t make the event? Purchase a signed copy of The Many Lives of Mama Love here.

FREE IN-STORE EVENT: Bookshop welcomes local New York Times bestselling author Lara Love Hardin for a reading and signing of her harrowing, hilarious, no-holds-barred memoir. In The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing, Hardin recounts her slide from soccer mom to opioid addict to jailhouse shot-caller and her unlikely comeback as a highly successful ghostwriter. Love Hardin will be in conversation with former mayor of Santa Cruz, Cynthia Chase.

"Start this thrilling, heartrending, funny book, and you won't stop. I couldn't. From page one, I was swept into Hardin's remarkable, un-put-down-able, artfully told story of suffering and redemption. This book can help anyone who's struggled and felt hopelessness (and who hasn't?). shows that not only can we survive the bleakest times, but we can thrive in them and because of them." —David Sheff, author of Beautiful Boy