Growing up in Florida, I always pictured a future in New York City.
I attended law school in Manhattan, then worked my way up the corporate ladder after graduation. Big Law was never my dream, but it felt like a stable career path.
Over time, though, I started realizing that working as a literary agent would be a much better fit for me. Every part of the job aligned with my skill set and passions — I’ve always had a sharp editorial eye, and I’d gained so many negotiation and client-management skills as a lawyer.
While working full-time, I spent a year learning as much as I could about the publishing industry, until a workshop on becoming an agent stopped me in my tracks. I learned that the only way I could realistically make a career pivot was to become an intern or an assistant first.
As a Big Law associate, though, there weren’t enough hours in the day to tack on an internship, and I couldn’t afford the risk of starting over as an assistant while saving for our new baby in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
So, I took my husband out to lunch and broke the news: At 31, eight months pregnant with our first child, I was giving up on pursuing my dream job.
Leaving New York City for my Florida hometown helped me pursue my dream career
Lauren Khan
Everything changed when I gave birth to our son in October 2023. Suddenly, being closer to family outweighed my love for Manhattan.
A week before my due date, we put an offer on a house in my small beach hometown on Florida’s Space Coast. The home was down the street from the house I grew up in, where my parents still live.
With a warmth and sense of community we’d been searching for, my hometown was everything we could’ve wanted for our growing family.
As happy as I was, there was one snag: I couldn’t keep my New York-based legal job after moving. Thankfully, we had some flexibility — my husband’s job was remote, so he could support us while I figured out my next steps.
Without the financial pressures that come with New York City’s higher cost of living, we suddenly could afford for me not to work for a while, so I poured myself into caring for our son and writing.
Lauren Khan
Meanwhile, all of the publishing dreams I’d pushed aside came rushing back. With a lower cost of living and my mom helping with childcare, becoming a literary agent was suddenly on the table again.
I started a remote publishing internship, which only made me more passionate about this career path. As it wrapped up, while pregnant with our second child, I began emailing literary agencies in search of a full-time agenting role.
Everything fell into place the morning I woke up to an email from the CEO of my dream agency asking for a call. My family had coming plans to visit New York, so I followed up that call with an in-person meeting with the VP. At the end of that meeting, she offered me a remote job as a literary agent.
Two weeks after giving birth to our daughter in July 2025, I opened up to queries from writers looking for a literary agent and never looked back. The agency told me to take my time after having my baby, but I was too excited to wait.
I spent my postpartum months reading manuscripts and signing new clients. As I got the hang of being a mom of two under 2 while managing my dream career, I’d never felt more fulfilled.
The move has allowed me to fulfill my wildest career dreams while still growing our family
About a year later, I now represent over a dozen clients across fiction and non-fiction with multiple book deals closed or in the works.
When I left my hometown for college and then law school in New York City, I never planned to head back. In a plot twist that even I never saw coming, my hometown has allowed me to achieve the impossible.
Now, in a dream career in publishing as a literary agent and agented author, I represent and write the stories I spent a decade dreaming about.
Two and a half years after giving up on my dream, I am living it.
