Born November 28, 1896, Mount Gilead, Ohio, U.S.—died November 15, 1965, New York, New York; Dawn Powell was an American novelist, playwright, and short-story writer known for her biting social satires.

Powell endured a difficult childhood. Her mother died in 1903 of what was officially recorded as pneumonia but may have been a botched abortion. Powell spent her childhood and adolescence moving throughout rural Ohio with her father and sisters, and her stepmother poorly treated her. When she was 13 years old, she managed to run away from home and find a safe haven with an aunt in Shelby, Ohio. There Powell attended school and was able to continue her education at Lake Eerie College for Women in Painesville, Ohio, where she was a fiction and poetry contributor and then an editor of the college quarterly. She graduated in 1918. When she settled in New York City, her literary career began to gain ground.

Though prolific (she wrote 16 novels, 10 plays, and some 100 short stories), Powell never became as well-known as her contemporaries. Although she gained some admirers in the United States and England, her relative obscurity was likely due to a general distaste for her harsh satiric tone.