John Green

Early life and education

John Michael Green was born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Mike and Sydney Green. Within two months of his birth, his family moved to Michigan, then later Birmingham, Alabama, and finally to Orlando, Florida. There he attended Glenridge Middle School and Lake Highland Preparatory School. Green's father worked as the state director of The Nature Conservancy in Michigan and Florida, and his mother, after being a stay-at-home mother, worked for a nonprofit called the Healthy Community Initiative. When he was 15, he started attending Indian Springs School outside of Birmingham, Alabama, graduating in 1995. While attending the preparatory school, Green became good friends with Daniel Alarcón, who would go on to become an author as well. Green's future wife Sarah Urist also attended Indian Springs at the same time as Green, though they did not become friends until they became reacquainted in the early 2000s.

Green has characterized his upbringing by saying that "although he had a happy childhood, [...] he was not always a happy child." Green has struggled with severe anxiety and obsessive–compulsive disorder his whole life. He has also spoken about being bullied during high school and how it made life as a teenager miserable for him.

Green enrolled at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1995, graduating with a double major in English and religious studies in 2000. While attending the school, he befriended and was in a comedy troupe with Ransom Riggs. After graduation, Green spent about half a year working as a student chaplain at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, while enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School, although he never actually attended the school. He intended to become an Episcopal priest, but the traumatic experiences of working in a hospital with children suffering from life-threatening illnesses and injuries made him reconsider his path. Parts of his experience inspired him to become an author, and later to write The Fault in Our Stars. After his time as a chaplain, Green moved to Chicago where he briefly continued performing with his college comedy troupe.

Career

Early career and novels (2001–2006)

In 2001, Green was hired as an editorial assistant at the book review journal Booklist, later becoming a production editor. While there he reviewed hundreds of books, particularly on literary fiction, Islam, boxing, and conjoined twins. He also wrote radio essays for NPR's All Things Considered and Chicago's public radio station WBEZ. He wrote essays for WBEZ after beginning an email correspondence with Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who became a close friend and mentor.

While working at Booklist, Green met author Ilene Cooper, whose example persuaded him he could write a novel, saying, "I saw that real people like Ilene wrote books; they weren't written in ivory towers." Cooper invited Green to lunch to discuss his future. She set a deadline for Green to present her with a draft of his first book, which Green failed to present to her twice over. Near the end of 2001, Green suffered from a mental health crisis so severe he could not eat, and instead drank only two-liter bottles of Sprite. He lived with his parents for a brief time while seeing a psychiatrist and going on medication. When he returned to Chicago, he began writing Looking for Alaska. Green wrote the novel divided into "before" and "after" the character Alaska's death, with chapters denoted through the number of days before or after the death. The structure was partially inspired by Green's reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, months prior, and its status as a dividing line in history and in people's lives.

Green presented the first draft to Cooper, who served as a mentor through the following two versions. Cooper sent the third draft to Dutton Children's Books in early 2003, which awarded Green with a publishing contract and a small four-figure book deal. Looking for Alaska was assigned to editor Julie Strauss-Gabel, which began their collaboration that has persisted through all of Green's books. In a 2015 interview with The New York Times, Green reflected, "In a publishing world that maybe doesn't have as many long-term relationships as it used to, she invested a lot of time in me before I ever earned a profit. I've never written a book without Julie. I wouldn't know how to do it."

Looking for Alaska was published in March 2005. The novel is a coming-of-age school story and teen romance about a boarding school student who gets bullied, partially inspired by Green's experiences at Indian Springs, Alabama, fictionalized as Culver Creek Preparatory High School. The novel was well-received critically, but saw only modest sales at first. The novel was awarded the annual Michael L. Printz Award by the American Library Association (ALA), recognizing the year's "best book written for teens, based entirely on its literary merit". Receiving the award caused book sales to rapidly rise, with Green describing his reaction upon hearing he had won the award as, "probably the purest moment of joy I've experienced. Even when my children were born it wasn't as raw and surprising." It also appeared on the ALA's annual "Top 10 Best Books for Young Adults" and appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list seven years later during a surge in Green's popularity after the release of The Fault in Our Stars. Green left his job at Booklist after receiving the Printz Award.

Online and literary collaborations (2007–2011)

Green moved back to Indianapolis in June 2007 when Sarah began a position as a curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. In an interview in October 2007, Green mentioned that his next solo novel's working title was Paper Towns.

Green's next novel was a collaboration with fellow young adult authors Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle titled Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances, released in September 2008. The book consists of three interconnected short stories, including Green's "A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle", with each set in the same small town on Christmas Eve during a massive snowstorm. In November 2009, the book reached number ten on The New York Times Best Seller list for paperback children's books.

Green's third solo novel, Paper Towns, was released in October 2008. Set in the suburbs of Orlando, Florida, the book is about the coming-of-age of the protagonist, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen, and his search for Margo Roth Spiegelman, his neighbor and childhood sweetheart. The story has often been described as a deconstruction of the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope, including by Green himself. It debuted at number five on The New York Times Best Seller list for children's books. Paper Towns was awarded the 2009 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Young Adult Novel and the 2010 Corine Literature Prize.

After this, Green and fellow young-adult writer David Levithan collaborated on the novel Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which Dutton published in April 2010. Set in the suburbs of Chicago, the book's narrative is divided evenly between two boys named Will Grayson; Green wrote the odd chapters on the Will Grayson who is straight, and Levithan wrote the even chapters on the Will Grayson who is gay. The novel debuted on The New York Times children's best-seller list after its release and remained there for three weeks. It was the first LGBT-themed young adult novel to make it to the list. It was a runner-up for two of the annual ALA awards: the Stonewall Book Award for excellence in LGBT children's and young adult literature, and the Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production.

In 2007, John and his brother Hank began a video blog project called Brotherhood 2.0 which ran from January 1 to December 31 of that year and was published to their YouTube channel "Vlogbrothers". The two agreed that they would forgo all text-based communication for the project's duration and instead maintain their relationship by exchanging these vlogs. Each submitted one to the other on alternating weekdays. The brothers gained a large following during the early years of YouTube, especially after Hank's video "Accio Deathly Hallows" was featured on the front page of YouTube. In what would have been the project's final video, the brothers revealed that they would extend their video correspondence indefinitely. As of July 2026, they have continued exchanging their vlogs and the channel has over 4.1 million subscribers and 1 billion views.

Breakout success (2012–2016)

Green had announced in August 2009 he was writing a new book titled The Sequel. The work was later scrapped, with parts integrated into his next book, The Fault in Our Stars, released on January 10, 2012. Green's fourth solo novel, the story is about Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old girl living in Indianapolis, Indiana, who has thyroid cancer. She is forced by her parents to attend a support group where she meets and falls in love with 17-year-old Augustus Waters, an ex-basketball player, amputee, and survivor of osteosarcoma. Green was inspired by his friendship with Esther Earl, as well as his time working as a student chaplain in a children's hospital. In an interview with The Atlantic in 2013, he stated, "The kids I met [while working as a student chaplain] were funny and bright and angry and dark and just as human as anybody else. And I really wanted to try to capture that. I felt that the stories that I was reading sort of oversimplified and sometimes even dehumanized them. [...] I wanted to argue for their humanity, their complete humanity." He crafted the novel in collaboration with his long-time editor Julie Strauss-Gabel. Green signed all 150,000 copies of the first printing.

The Fault in Our Stars was massively successful, creating a passionate fan base of readers. Six months before the release of the book, before it had even been finished, online pre-orders led to the book being a number one seller on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. After release, the book debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list for children's chapter books. It went on to spend forty-three total weeks at the number one spot and over two years in the top ten.

Green himself also saw a significant increase in his fame, with the Indianapolis Business Journal noting that he had much more "visibility and presence in his fans' lives" than other contemporaneous authors with equal or greater book sales. Upon the book's release, Green began a 17-city book tour, visiting largely sold-out venues across the country. On the first anniversary of its release, John and his brother Hank performed a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall's Isaac Stern Auditorium in New York City, which also featured appearances from Neil Gaiman and The Mountain Goats. Green appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson in March 2013. Green stated his anxiety leading up to the television interview prevented him from getting work done for weeks before.

In late 2013, Green stated that he was writing a new book with the working title The Racket. He sold 5,000 words of a rough draft of the work during that years Project for Awesome. That same year, Green hired long-time Nerdfighter Rosianna Halse Rojas as his executive assistant.

Established author and internet personality (2017–2022)

In November 2014, amidst the intense success of The Fault in Our Stars, Green wrote on his Tumblr page that he was not working on his previously announced next project, The Racket, anymore, but was working on something else with a different title. In September 2015, Green announced that he would be taking a break from social media to focus on writing his next book. Around this time, Green experienced a period of severe anxiety, partly due to the perceived burden to follow up the massive success of The Fault in Our Stars. He worried he might never write another book. He stopped taking his prescribed medications hoping to reinvigorate his creativity and his mental health suffered, with him later describing the experience saying, "I can't think straight—I can only think in swirls and scribbles." After he recovered in late 2015, he began writing Turtles All the Way Down.

In August 2016, Green stated that over the next ten months he would be limiting his public appearances in order to finish a draft of the new book. But on September 20, Green took to his YouTube channel to say that he may never publish another book, citing his current writing experience as, "this intense pressure, like people were watching over my shoulder while I was writing". He eventually submitted a draft to his editor Strauss-Gabel, and they worked on the book together for another year.

On June 22, 2017, it was announced that Green's fifth solo novel would be titled Turtles All the Way Down. It was released on October 10, 2017, and debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. The story centers on 16-year-old Aza Holmes, an Indianapolis high school student with obsessive–compulsive disorder and anxiety, and her search for a fugitive billionaire as she begins a relationship with that billionaire's son. Speaking about the novel, Green said, "This is my first attempt to write directly about the kind of mental illness that has affected my life since childhood, so while the story is fictional, it is also quite personal." Like his previous books, Green signed the first 200,000 copies of the book, as part of the initial run of 1.5 million copies.

Upon the release of his book, he and his brother Hank went on a book tour. In May 2018, Green was interviewed by then-quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts, Andrew Luck, after Turtles All the Way Down was named a selection for the Andrew Luck Book Club. They discussed the book and their relationships with anxiety and stress for the event that promoted the PBS series The Great American Read.

Focus on global health (2022–present)

Green became a member of the board of trustees for Partners in Health in 2022.

In mid-2023, Green was a leading figure in a successful campaign to persuade pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to allow generic versions of the tuberculosis drug bedaquiline to be produced, allowing increased global access to the drug. In May, Green published an op-ed in The Washington Post on the subject. A deal with the Stop TB Partnership was formed after J&J's evergreening of the patent received public backlash from an awareness campaign started by Green in June; J&J stated they had decided to allow generics to be produced the month prior. Two months later, Green urged Cepheid, an American molecular diagnostics company owned by Danaher Corporation, to lower the cost of the cartridges used in their GeneXpert machines to $5, hoping to save lives by giving more people access to early detection of tuberculosis. The pressure campaign was again partially successful, with Danaher reducing the price of one of the most critical tests by one-fifth and committing to make no profit on the sale of that test to lower and middle income countries.

On September 22, 2023, Green attended, and briefly spoke at, a high-level United Nations meeting on tuberculosis. In March 2024, the Green brothers announced that they and their families were pledging $1 million a year through 2027 alongside $10 million provided by USAID and $11 million matched by the Department of Health in the Philippines to address tuberculosis in the Philippines. That same month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) named John Green a 2024 "TB Elimination Champion" and he published another op-ed in The Washington Post on the need for greater access to tuberculosis diagnostics in poorer countries.

In October 2024, Green announced his second nonfiction book would be titled Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. The book was published on March 18, 2025, through Crash Course Books, a new imprint of Penguin Young Readers that is an extension of the Crash Course YouTube channel. In it, Green wrote, "TB has become the organizing principle of my professional life over the last five years." The book tells the history of human responses to tuberculosis intertwined with the story of Henry Reider, a young tuberculosis patient Green met in Sierra Leone in 2019, through which Green asserts that the disease is not primarily caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis anymore but by human choices. The book was a New York Times number-one bestseller in nonfiction for multiple weeks, remaining on the list for 23 weeks.

Influence and reception

Books

All of Green's books have received positive critical reception and appeared on the New York Times Best Seller list. Green's books have been translated into 55 languages with more than 50 million copies in print worldwide, including The Fault in Our Stars, which is one of the best-selling books of all time. Green's idiosyncratic voice and rapid rise to fame in 2014 are credited with creating a major shift in the young adult fiction market. While reviewing the Andrew Smith young-adult novel, Winger, A. J. Jacobs of The New York Times used the term "GreenLit" to describe young adult books that contain "sharp dialogue, defective authority figures, occasional boozing, unrequited crushes, and one or more heartbreaking twists". According to The Wall Street Journal, "[s]ome credit him with ushering in a new golden era for contemporary, realistic, literary teen fiction, following more than a decade of dominance by books about young wizards, sparkly vampires, and dystopia. A blurb or Twitter endorsement from Mr. Green can ricochet around the Internet and boost sales, an effect book bloggers call 'the John Green effect'." Zareen Jaffery, executive editor of Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers said: "What I really like about what people are calling 'the John Green effect' is that there's more of an interest in authentic, genuine, relatable characters." Some readers and authors have been critical of the terms. Green himself voiced his disagreement with the idea that he is single-handedly responsible for launching or promoting any one individual's career.

Critics have also noted Green's evolution as an author. With the release of the Turtles All the Way Down in 2017, several reviewers referenced a dismissive perception of Green's now very popular œuvre as "sad teen books", which had emerged since the success of The Fault in Our Stars. Despite this, they praised Turtles All the Way Down as truthful and authentic enough to transcend these imagined drawbacks. Matt Haig of The Guardian wrote, "Turtles All the Way Down often dwells in cliché, but only as pop songs and epic poems do, mining the universal to create something that speaks to the familiar rhythms of the heart. It might just be a new modern classic." Likewise, with the release of The Anthropocene Reviewed book in 2021, Scott Neumyer of Shondaland wrote that, "Green may have made his name by writing fiction (and for good reason), but this first foray into nonfiction is his most mature, compelling, and beautifully written book yet."

Green has received criticism for his perceived writing of "Manic Pixie Dream Girls", a term coined by Nathan Rabin to describe a female character that, "exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures". Paper Towns and the character of Margo Roth Spiegelman have often been cited as a deconstruction of the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" trope, and Green has stated he specifically wrote her as such. In October 2022, Green tweeted, "I think basically all criticisms of my work are correct and justifiable other than the most popular one, 'he writes manic pixie dream girls,' which is just so stupid. [...] THE WHOLE POINT OF THE NOVELS is the danger of such misimagining, hence the eventual revelation: 'Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.' It's not like I made it subtle." Despite this, some critics have questioned whether the story adequately deconstructed the trope, or merely perpetuated it. Green has readily discussed what he believes to be flaws in his novels when he looked at them in retrospect. Additionally, in response to a fan's tweet, Green apologized for using the word retarded in Paper Towns, stating, "Yeah, I regret it. At the time, I thought an author's responsibility was to reflect language as I found it. Still, now... eight years later, I don't feel like a book about humanizing the other benefited from dehumanizing language."

Online ventures

As John and Hank Green began uploading YouTube videos regularly in 2007, they became part of the early culture of YouTube as the modern content creator industry was born from the YouTube Partner Program. The New York Times noted John as having "[an] uncanny knack for channeling the voice of marginalized but smart, self-identifying nerds, a gift he has turned into a YouTube empire". Many others have come to regard the brothers and their YouTube empire as pioneering in the online video space. In 2011, The Daily Dot named the Green brothers as the most important people on YouTube.

The Vlogbrothers' content has received positive reception from commentators and fans, especially for the shared values expounded by their videos. Amelia Thomson-Deveaux writing for The American Prospect commented that, "what makes Nerdfighteria so potent does seem to be the moral imperative that the Brothers Green throw at their bajillion viewers' feet: to take their weirdness and anxiety and turn it into empathy. It's become kind of a culture." The Crash Course project has also been successful in its reach, with the John Green-hosted "World History" series alone having attracted millions of viewers.

Personal life and interests

Green is an Episcopalian, and was married in a Catholic church. He is married to Sarah Urist Green, with whom he has two children. John and Sarah met when they both attended the same preparatory school in Indian Springs, Alabama. They became reacquainted eight years later in Chicago, when Green began dating Sarah's boxing partner; after they broke up, John became friends with Sarah. The two became engaged in April 2005 and married in May 2006. In early videos on the VlogBrothers channel, Sarah is referred to as "the Yeti" due to her not appearing visibly on camera, though she is no longer referred to as such.

Green was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and has lived there since 2007. The city has served as the setting for several of his novels, and he wrote a review of it in his podcast and book of essays The Anthropocene Reviewed. Green often speaks of his love for the city. On July 14, 2015, Greg Ballard, the mayor of Indianapolis, proclaimed that that day would be "John Green Day" in his city. That month, Teresa Jacobs, the mayor of Orange County, Florida, declared that July 24 would also be John Green Day.

Green is an avid sports fan. Green drove the pace car at the 2016 Grand Prix of Indianapolis, and was honorary co-chairman of the 500 Festival Host Committee that year. He is also a supporter of the English football club Liverpool F.C. of the Premier League and an official sponsor of the English League One club AFC Wimbledon, whose kit have featured a Nerdfighters emblem on the back of their shorts since 2014. Starting in 2011, Green had a gaming series on YouTube where he played FIFA, first as the "Swoodilypoopers", a fictionalized version of Swindon Town F.C., and then, starting in 2013, as the "Wimbly Womblys", a fictionalized version of AFC Wimbledon. Advertising revenue from the series was donated to the team. In January 2025, Green facilitated the transfer of Marcus Browne to Wimbledon, partially from earnings from his livestreaming.

Green has stated he has aphantasia.

Works

Books

Looking for Alaska (2005)

An Abundance of Katherines (2006)

Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances (2008) – with Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle

Paper Towns (2008)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010) – with David Levithan

The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Turtles All the Way Down (2017)

Hollywood, Ending (2026)

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet (2021)

Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection (2025)

Short stories

"The Approximate Cost of Loving Caroline", Twice Told: Original Stories Inspired by Original Artwork (2006), illustrated by Scott Hunt

"The Great American Morp", 21 Proms (2007), edited by David Levithan and Daniel Ehrenhaft

"Freak the Geek", Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd (2009), edited by Holly Black

"Reasons", What You Wish For: A Book for Darfur (2011)

Other

Cocktail Party Cheat Sheets (2006), Mental Floss gift book for which Green served as an editor and contributor

Scatterbrained (2006), Mental Floss gift book for which Green served as an editor and contributor

What's the Difference? (2006), Mental Floss gift book for which Green served as an editor and contributor

Thisisnottom (2009), an interactive novel hidden behind riddles.

Zombicorns (2010), an online Creative Commons licensed zombie novella.

The War for Banks Island (2012), a sequel to Zombicorns, released as a Project for Awesome donation perk.

The Sequel (2012), an unfinished novel, much of which was reworked into The Fault in Our Stars. The first 6,000 words were released as a Project for Awesome donation perk.

Space and The Cat and the Mouse (2013), stories released as Project for Awesome donation perks

An Imperial Affliction (2014), extracts used as a prop in the film adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars and later released as a Project for Awesome donation perk.

This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Words of Esther Grace Earl (2014), by Esther Earl, Wayne Earl, and Lori Earl, introduction by John Green

My Drunk Kitchen (2014), by Hannah Hart, foreword by John Green

The Golden Rule: Deluxe Edition (2019), by Ilene Cooper, foreword by John Green