Her memoir The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers, was a New York Times Editors' Choice and was named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews.
[1] Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Davis is a graduate of Spelman College in Atlanta and of Columbia University, where she received an MS in journalism.
Her second novel, Into the Go-Slow, was chosen as a "best book of 2014" by outlets including Salon, The San Francisco Chronicle, BookRiot, Bustle and The Root.
[2] In 2019, she published her memoir The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers, which was a New York Times Editors' Choice, and was named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews and Real Simple.
[1] Written to honor her remarkable mother, who ran an illegal lottery operation out of her Detroit home so as to give her family a stable, middle-class life,[4][5] the book was described by The New York Times critic Jennifer Szalai as "a daughter's gesture of loving defiance, an act of reclamation, an absorbing portrait of her mother in full",[6] and Joshunda Sanders writing in Kirkus Reviews concluded a profile of the author by saying: "Fannie orients and centers a world where she risks everything to provide and demonstrate unconditional love for her family.