Born and raised in Coventry, Davies studied physics at Manchester University then English at Cambridge University.

In 1992 he moved to the United States to study in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University.

Davies is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has taught at the University of Oregon and at Emory University and until recently was director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Short story collections

• The Ugliest House in the World (1997)
• Equal Love (2000)

Novels

• The Welsh Girl (2007)

The Ugliest House in the World won the John Llewellyn Rhys and PEN/Macmillan Prizes in the UK, as well as the 1998 H.L. Davis Award for Short Fiction.

Equal Love was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

His short fiction has been widely anthologized, appearing in Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards 1998, Best American Short Stories 1995, 1996, and 2001, and The Mechanics' Institute Review 6 2009. In 2003, he was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'.

The Welsh Girl was longlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and was listed as one of the best fiction books of 2007 by The Boston Globe.

Davies is also a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has taught at the University of Oregon and at Emory University and has served as director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.