As a young girl, Dawn Powell had a passion for reading and would devour as many novels as she could. In Mount Gilead, Ohio in 1903, Dawn's mother passed away, leaving her and her two sisters to fend for themselves while their father traveled. She found solace with her auntie May in Shelby, Ohio, where she was encouraged to read and write to her heart's content.

Through the help of Auntie May, Dawn was able to attend Lake Erie College in Painesville. During her time in school, Dawn was active in literary societies, school plays, and eventually became the editor-in-chief of the school's newspaper.

Upon her graduation in 1918, she moved to Manhattan to pursue a freelance writing career. In 1925, Dawn published her first novel. Many of her early stories reflected on her time growing up in Ohio and the struggles she endured in her childhood. In the later parts of her writing career, Dawn focused more on New York City. In total, Dawn Powell wrote 16 novels, ten plays, and around 100 short stories, and received the 1964 Marjorie Peabody Waite Award from the National Institute of Arts and Letters.

Despite the award and acclaim from the likes of Ernest Hemingway and E.E. Cummings, she struggled to captivate a wide enough audience. Regardless of the critical acclaim given to her work, when she died in 1965, most of her books were no longer in print.

However, nearly 20 years later, Gore Vidal wrote an article for The New York Review of Books that revived the Powell name. He praised her wit and satirical powers and may have saved her work from being forgotten forever.