Hemon was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, then Yugoslavia, to a father of Ukrainian descent and Bosnian Serb mother. Hemon's great-grandfather, Teodor Hemon, came to Bosnia from Western Ukraine prior to World War I, when both countries were a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Hemon graduated from the University of Sarajevo and was a published writer in former Yugoslavia by the time he was 26."

Since 1992 he has lived in the United States, where he found himself as a tourist and became stranded at the outbreak of the war in Bosnia. In the U.S. he has worked as a Greenpeace canvasser, sandwich assembly-line worker, bike messenger, graduate student in English literature, bookstore salesperson, and ESL teacher.

He published his first story in English, "The Life and Work of Alphonse Kauders" in Triquarterly in 1995, followed "The Sorge Spy Ring," also in [Triquarterly] in 1997 and "Islands" in Ploughshares in 1998, and eventually "Blind Jozef Pronek" in The New Yorker in 1999. His work also eventually appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Hemon also has a bi-weekly column, written and published in Bosnian, called "Hemonwood" in the Sarajevo-based magazine, BH Dani (BH Days).

Hemon lives with his second wife, Teri Boyd, in Chicago with their daughter, Ella.

In 2000 Hemon published his first book, The Question of Bruno, which included short stories and a novella, to overwhelmingly positive reviews.

His second book, Nowhere Man, followed in 2002. Variously referred to as a novel and as a collection of linked stories, Nowhere Man concerns Jozef Pronek, a character who earlier appeared in one of the stories in The Question of Bruno. It was a finalist for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award.

In June 2006, "Exchange of Pleasant Words" and "A Coin" was published by Picador.

In May 2008, Hemon released The Lazarus Project, which featured photographs by Hemon's childhood friend, photographer Velibor Bozovic. The novel was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award[1] and the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award.

In May 2009, Hemon released a collection of stories, Love and Obstacles, which were largely written at the same time as he wrote The Lazarus Project.

As an accomplished fiction writer who learned English as an adult, Hemon has some similarities to Joseph Conrad, which he acknowledges through allusion in The Question of Bruno, though he is mostly frequently compared to Vladimir Nabokov. All of his stories deal in some way with the Yugoslav wars, Bosnia, or Chicago, but they vary substantially in genre.

Hemon, along with E. Annie Proulx, won a National Magazine Award for Fiction for The New Yorker in 2009.

Hemon, was awarded the St. Francis College Literary Prize in 2009.

Hemon was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2008.

Hemon was awarded a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation in 2004.

Hemon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003.

Hemon was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2003.

Hemon won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares in 2001.