According to The Tyee, in her childhood, Dawson experienced life-threatening asthma, and the medications she took destroyed her kidneys; doctors advised her parents that she would not live beyond adolescence.
"[5] In 2008, she illustrated author Susan Hughes's graphic novel, No Girls Allowed, telling the story of various women throughout history who disguised themselves as men.
[10] Dawson was approached by Penguin Canada to create a historical graphic novel about the Canadian suffragette Nellie McClung,[citation needed] which led to the book Hyena in Petticoats.
[18] She produced the black-and-white comics panels in Frieda Wishinsky's children's book Avis Dolphin (2015), a fictionalized account of the 12-year-old girl who survived the sinking of RMS Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915.
[21] A 2018 translation of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth's White as Milk, Red as Blood, a 19th-century collection of fairy tales recovered in Germany in 2009, was published by Knopf Canada and illustrated by Dawson.