Donovan Hohn is the author of two books, The Inner Coast: Essays (2020) and Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea (2011). The latter was a New York Times Notable Book and runner-up for both the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction and the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His essays have appeared in such publications as Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Lapham's Quarterly, and The New Republic. He is the recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award, an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and a 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Hohn joined Lewis Lapham’s editorial staff at Harper’s magazine in 1998 and stayed until 2001, when he began writing for the magazine. He returned to the Harper’s editorial staff in 2009 to edit the Readings section, essays, fiction, and literary journalism. From 2011 to 2013, he was features editor of GQ. He has taught nonfiction in the MFA program of the University of Michigan and directed the creative writing program at Wayne State University.

He began contributing to Lapham’s Quarterly in 2011 and guest-edited the Water issue in 2018. In 2023, Lewis Lapham invited him to edit the Islands issue, yet to be published. Since June 2025, he has served as the Quarterly’s acting editor and the host of its podcast, The World in Time.