Photo by Beth Chimera about the author
Donovan Hohn
Journalist and Bestselling Author of Moby-Duck
On January 10, 1992, a freighter en route to Tacoma from Hong Kong encountered a storm in the North Pacific. As the massive ship lurched through three-story waves, its cargo toppled overboard. Among the missing items: 28,800 plastic bath toys.
Reading through student assignments late one night, Donovan Hohn, then a high school English teacher at a private school in Manhattan, first learned about these missing “rubber duckies.” Over the next decade, they would circle the North Pacific, washing up on beaches from Washington to Alaska. Donovan began to follow the many stories within the fable-like fate of the lost shipment. His quest drew him far and wide, as he met high-risk oceanographic researchers, investigated the secretive club of maritime shipping conglomerates, explored the underside of Chinese toy manufacturing, and charted an enormous swath of marine litter in the North Pacific known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Moby-Duck, his bestselling book, is a modern adventure yarn about mythic disappearance and an impulsive and surprising hunt for elusive quarry.
Donovan Hohn is a journalist whose work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, and the Best Creative Nonfiction. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. A former senior editor of Harper’s, Hohn is now the features editor of GQ. He lives in New York with his wife and sons.
Learn more about this speakerPress Links
"Moby-Duck: When 28,800 Bath Toys Are Lost At Sea"
NPR's Fresh Air
"28,800 Toys at Sea"
The New York Times
"Adrift in the Pacific Ocean: Bath Toys and Curiosity"
The Boston Globe
Donovan Hohn Interview
The New Yorker
"Rubber Ducks Unlimited"
The Globe and Mail
"In Search of Moby-Duck"
American Public Media Marketplace
"Overboard"
Dallas Morning News
"Donovan Hohn Ships Out with an Engaging Moby-Duck"
Cleveland Plain Dealer
"The Siren Song of the Bath Toy"
The New York Times
"Toy Story"
Time
Moby-Duck Review
People Magazine
"Teacher Uncovers Secrets of Ocean Garbage in Moby-Duck"
WBUR's Here&Now
Moby-Duck Review
Chicago Sun-Times
Featured Book
Moby-Duck
"Packed with seafaring lore and astute reporting, this enthralling narrative is the Moby Dick of drifting ducks."
—Publishers Weekly
"A thoroughly engaging environmental/travel title that crosses partisan divides with its solid research and apolitical nature. Rubber ducks as harmless, ubiquitous symbols of childhood? Not anymore, not by a long shot. This dazzles from start to finish."
—Colleen Mondor, Booklist
Speaking Topics
- Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
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