Dawn Promislow's novel, Wan, was published by Freehand Books in 2022 and has been critically acclaimed. It was short-listed for the Fred Kerner Book Award 2023, was a Best Fiction of 2022 in The Miramichi Reader, and was on CBC Books's 2022 Summer and Holiday lists for historical fiction. 
Dawn is also the author of Jewels and Other Stories (Mawenzi House, 2010), which was long-listed for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award 2011, and named one of the eight best fiction debuts of 2011 by the Globe and Mail. Her short stories have been anthologized in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, book 5 (2010), StoryTime (2010), African Roar 2012, and The Best of African Roar (2016). Her story "Billy" was short-listed for UK-based Wasafiri's New Writing Prize 2010. Other stories, as well as essays and poems, have been published in literary journals, among them Numéro Cinq, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Penguin Random House's Hazlitt, Munyori Literary Journal, Berfrois, and SLiP (Stellenbosch Literary Project, in South Africa). Her poem "lemon" was a finalist for the 2015 Berfrois Poetry Prize. She was the 2015-2016 writer-in-residence at the Toronto Heliconian Club, and has been the recipient of grants from the Ontario Arts Council, a writer's Work-in-Progress grant among them.