Lakshmi Simhan grew up in Kuwait, India, the Philippines, the US and Japan. She attended Bryn Mawr College and the Delhi School of Economics, worked in international human rights law, and as a journalist in India before attending the MFA program at NYU. In 2018 she was a Sundance Labs semifinalist for her script, Dry Summer. She is currently developing a TV series with Avi Korine (Mister Lonely, The Double). Dry Summer is the first in a planned trilogy of films about different communities of the Columbia River Gorge.