[1][2] Later living in California and Texas, he also wrote short stories for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post.

Davis was born in Nonpareil, Douglas County, Oregon, in the Umpqua River Valley, and lived in Roseburg in his early years.

In 1926, Davis and James Stevens privately published a small booklet, Status Rerum: A Manifesto Upon the Present Condition of Northwest Literature.

Although only a few copies were printed, the booklet attracted notice because of its bluntness and invective against the local literary scene of Portland.

Robinson Jeffers memorably described the pamphlet as a "rather grimly powerful wheel to break butterflies on.

The award allowed him to move to Jalisco, Mexico, where he lived for two years, concentrating on his writing.

It was well reviewed by writers such as Robert Penn Warren, although New Yorker critic Clifton Fadiman did not like it.

There Davis wrote short stories as his primary source of income, publishing them in such magazines as Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post.

In fact, although Davis continued to improve as a writer, none of his later efforts received the attention of Honey in the Horn.

He also changed publishers, from Harper & Brothers to William Morrow & Company, apparently because of a long-running dispute over royalty payments.