Lavanya was born in New Delhi, India and grew up in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong before coming to the US for her undergrad and master’s degrees. She lived in New York for nine years before moving to Toronto, which she currently calls home. Lavanya has worked in the publishing industry for thirteen years and is on the board of directors for the Festival of Literary Diversity.

Her novel, LEAVE AND COME BACK, was named an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Romance, An Indigo’s Best 100 Books of the Year So Far, and was the June 2026 pick for Lilly Singh’s Lilly’s Library Book Club.

Leave and Come Back is her first novel. Prior to this, she has written for such prestigious spaces as the fifteen half-used notebooks in her desk drawer, over a hundred separate notes on her iPhone, and briefly during when she was four, on the walls of her house.