Lakshmi Palecanda started off in science. Her Bachelor’s degree is in Horticulture, from Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, Coimbatore. After getting her Master’s Degree in Biological Sciences at Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, she worked for ten years in scientific research before becoming a freelance writer.

Lakshmi’s writing career started off with an incredible chance meeting on a train. After her obtaining her bachelor’s degree, she studied in New Delhi for a while. Traveling home to Coimbatore from Delhi for the holidays in December 1989, she discovered the assistant editor of The Hindustan Times to be one of her co-passengers. She had with her a humor article that she had written when bored. She showed it to him and he said he would publish it. Half-skeptical, she sent it to him and he did publish it. He also published a second one.

Then, she went to the US for her Master’s program, and Science took over her life. She abandoned her writing as she threw herself into making her career in scientific research. But it came back into her life when she took an evening class on writing and realized that it was her calling. She started off with small articles in the local paper, and graduated to writing humor articles for Indian-American magazines, and gained a column in one of them, India Currents. On returning to India, she continued her dream career by writing for different newspapers and magazines.

Lakshmi has been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines. The Indian-American magazines she has published in include Khabar (Atlanta, GA), India Currents (San Jose, CA) and Little India (Connecticut), and she has about 50 articles in them. Among Indian magazines, she has published an article in The Week. She has contributed a few articles to the local paper, The Star of Mysore and written over 75 articles for The Deccan Herald. She contributes regularly to the Sunday edition of The Deccan Herald, which is The Sunday Herald. She has also published a collection of articles in an anthology called ‘Indian-American … Then Indian Again!’ which is also an e-book.

Lakshmi writes short stories as well. In June 2010, she won the Sunday Herald Short Story Competition, and a year later, won Honorable Mention in the same competition. She also has one short story published by Mills and Boon India, one by India Currents, two by Red Rose Romance and five short stories published in Woman’s Era.

Lakshmi is a novelist too. She has published two romantic novels, titled ‘Playing at Love’ and ‘The Fifth Wedding’ through Pageturn Publishers, Chennai. She always has a novel or two going at any given time.

In 2014, Lakshmi published a series of 8 books on Life Skills for Children, called ‘Life: Values and Life Skills’ through Knowledge Publishers, Bangalore. These books are being used in teaching classes one through eight in schools.

In addition to her other work, Lakshmi has also written children’s stories in verse format for an iPad app called iStorytree.

When she is not writing, Lakshmi is a consultant in Soft skill training at Infosys and several Engineering colleges. Furthermore, she also trains for Creative Writing in schools and colleges. She lives in Mysore with her husband and two daughters.