Dr. David Laing Dawson (born 1941) is an acclaimed Canadian psychiatrist, novelist, painter, and playwright whose extensive medical career deeply informs his dark, satirical, and realistic fictional works. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, he chose his pen name to honor a seafaring ancestor from the Orkney Islands. Professionally, he spent ten years as the Chief of Psychiatry at Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital and served as a Professor of Psychiatry at McMaster University. He vaulted into the literary spotlight with his 1990 debut novel, Last Rights, a gripping institutional mystery tracking an elderly retirement home resident who uncovers a sinister plot behind the sudden deaths of his peers; the book became a finalist for the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. Over a multi-faceted creative life, Dawson has published numerous critically acclaimed novels—including Double Blind, Essondale, and Don't Look Down—as well as academic texts, plays, and poetry. He currently runs a popular mental health blog, showcases his landscape paintings in British Columbia galleries, and continues to write from his home in West Kelowna.
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