Until the age of eight, he lived with his parents on the estate of well known political artist and fine-art illuminator Arthur Szyk, who published The New Order (1941) and Ink & Blood (1946) and illustrated numerous Biblical and literary texts, as well as the 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.
His doctoral dissertation, The Eccentric Orbit: Dimensions of the Creative Process in Thoreau's Major Writings, was directed by Howard P. Vincent.
His collection of signed and inscribed first edition books and fine press chapbooks by poets William Heyen and Michael Waters is also housed at Ohio University's Mahn Center.
He designed and taught the first courses at Ohio University on women's fiction, environmental writing, fly fishing literature, and doctoral student pedagogy.
DeMott directed twenty-one Ph.D. dissertations on a wide range of American literary topics and four in creative writing (poetry), many of which were published as full-length books.
In addition to teaching American literature at Ohio University, DeMott has also regularly taught an introductory poetry workshop in the Creative Writing program.
His second, The Weather in Athens: Poems, was also published by Bottom Dog Press in 2001 in Two Midwest Voices, which also included poet Jerry Roscoe's Mirror Lake.
DeMott's third collection, Brief and Glorious Transit, a chapbook of prose poems, was published by Pudding House Press in 2007.
DeMott's continuing scholarly and literary interests have led him to publish Dave Smith: A Literary Archive, an annotated bio-bibliography and personal memoir (Ohio University Libraries, 2000), and Conversations with Jim Harrison (University Press of Mississippi, 2002, with an updated edition slated for 2019), a collection of interviews by the author and screenwriter, best known for the novella Legends of the Fall.
DeMott also provided the introduction for Jim Harrison: A Comprehensive Bibliography, 1964–2008 (University of Nebraska Press, 2009), by Gregg Orr and Beef Torrey.
The former is a collection of 23 original essays by American novelists, poets, and essayists—including co-editor Dave Smith, Tom Brokaw, Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, Richard Ford, Craig Nova, Clyde Edgerton, Guy de la Valdene, and others—on the joys and tribulations of bird hunting and living with the setters, pointers, spaniels, and retrievers required to do it.
The latter, which is dedicated to fly fishing author and publishing legend Nick Lyons, includes 31 original essays on the art of fly fishing by Harrison, McGuane, de la Valdene, Nova, Michael Keaton, Russell Chatham, Jim Fergus, Ted Leeson, Pam Houston, Kim Barnes, Robert Wrigley, Kate Fox, Ron Ellis, Margot Page, Chris Dombrowski, Paul Schullery, Sydney Lea, Nick Lyons and others.