Lavanya Lakshmi: I Fell Out of Love With the Story and Fell Back in Love With It
In this interview, author Lavanya Lakshmi discusses how sheer determination helped her write her debut novel, Leave and Come Back.
Lavanya Lakshmi has lived in nine cities across India, China, the U.S., and Canada. One of her many childhood homes was a suite on the 37th floor of a luxury hotel. She earned a master’s degree from NYU and lived in New York City for nine years before moving to Toronto, where she currently resides, despite being a very vocal hater of cold weather. She has worked in and around book publishing her whole career. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
In this interview, Lavanya discusses how sheer determination helped her write her debut novel, Leave and Come Back, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Lavanya Lakshmi
Literary agent: Aram Fox, MMQA
Book title: Leave and Come Back
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/Viking at Penguin Random House
Release date: June 16, 2026
Genre/category: Women’s fiction/romance/family drama
Elevator pitch: Drama is already at a high when Simran returns to her estranged family home for the first time in seven years for her cousin’s big Indian wedding. But after her new boyfriend, Leo, unexpectedly shows up and immediately gets entangled in family drama, she and her cousins will have to get him on their family matriarch’s good side, forcing Simran to confront all the reasons she left—all during a two-week, multi-event, 400-person wedding.
What prompted you to write this book?
Like many, during the lockdowns in the early 2020s, after a lifetime of writing false starts, I finally sat in one place long enough to bang out a first draft in around four months. I know the question is asking what prompted me to write this book but what feels more important than that is that I took a very imperfect first draft and story full of plot holes and under-developed characters and I kept at it. I went through many rounds of developmental edits. I fell out of love with the story and fell back in love with it. I agonized over plot points and word choice. I wrote and rewrote this story until it was its best version. So, in the grand scheme of things, it feels less important to reflect on what prompted me to write this book than what kept me with it: Sheer determination and a belief in the things I was trying to say in this story, about how all the ways family, love, grief, community, and celebration are inextricably intertwined.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Yes, the novel originally started with more of a focus on the romance between Simran and Leo. But as I worked on it with my agent, he felt that the heart of the story lay with the family dynamics. So, I rewrote a lot—this originally started as a first person, dual-POV, dual-timeline story and ended as a close-third, single timeline book! For dramatic tension, cohesion of setting, and character development, it made sense to set in the two-week period of the wedding. In working on it with my editors, we deepened a lot of the supporting characters’ stories and arc, which, I think, has resulted in this wonderful mix of a romance as well as family drama with a rich cast of characters.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
For sure! I think everyone knows the big moments: the edits, the cover reveals, the book going on sale. To me, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a number of small milestones. Like pass pages, which is the first time you see your manuscript laid out as a novel. Or hearing audiobook narrator auditions—there’s something so incredible about your words in another artist’s voice, about people “playing” your characters. Along those lines, I’ve been lucky enough to have readers create visual art for my book, which blows me away. There are so many of these moments: readers picking up on the smallest little details. The first time you sign your book for someone. When someone who has known you for a while reads your book and sees the artist-writer part of you.
This process and journey is incredibly difficult—there’s been emotionally taxing moments. But there’s also all these small (and some not-so-small) highlights that I will always cherish.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I worked on this book for a while—I wrote the first draft very quickly, then I spent years editing on my own, then with my agent, and then my editors. If you’d asked me before, I would have said this was a mark of a bad story—but it’s actually the opposite. I had multiple agent offers, and we went to auction with my manuscript. There were many people who wanted to be a part of the publishing of this book, even in its less-realized iterations, which means there’s something to it. The surprise to me was the fact that there was so much to mine out of this story. With the help of a great team, I could, at various stages, bring it up to new levels. We kept deepening characters and creating limerence in the plot, and sharpening a joke.
The final book is so different from that first draft, and yet, somehow, the same book—the seeds of a great story have been there from the start.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
At the heart of the book is a story about how family members deal with grief—how it can separate us from the ones we love, but also how it can bring us together. Many stories are about grief that is fresh from recently events; Leave and Come Back deals with grief when it feels like everyone has moved on years later. I hope readers who have felt or may feel that way connect with Simran and know that there is no timeline for healing. I hope folks who are part of families who don’t talk about difficult emotions find a way to do so. And the thing I hope the most is that readers see that even if someone they love is gone, they are not lost forever; that they’re here, in one way or another, and there’s always a chance they’ll come back to you.
On a lighter note, I hope that if the reader hasn’t been to an Indian wedding, they feel like they have after reading the book, like they’ve experienced the ceremonies, the chaos, and above all, the love! (I’m only sorry they don’t also get to eat the food.)
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Getting an agent, becoming a published author, sharing your work and having others connect with it, honing your craft—none of that will happen if you don’t sit down and write. Start there. Take as much time as you need. Challenge yourself as you work. You should not be the same person you were when you started writing. Finish your work. The rest will follow.
