John Green

About John Green

John Green was born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis and grew up in Orlando, Florida, and Birmingham, Alabama. He earned a bachelor's degree in English and Religious Studies from Kenyon College in 2000. Before becoming a novelist, he worked as a hospital chaplain at a children's hospital—an experience that deeply shaped his understanding of illness, mortality, and the lives of young people under duress. He then moved to Chicago, where he worked as an editorial assistant at Booklist magazine while writing his debut novel.

Green lives in Indianapolis with his wife, curator Sarah Urist Green, and their two children. In addition to writing fiction, he co-hosts the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel with his brother Hank Green, which has drawn more than three million subscribers since launching on January 1, 2007. The channel gave rise to the Nerdfighter community—a global network of readers and activists—and to Crash Course, one of the most widely used educational YouTube channels in the world.

His Most Challenged Work

Looking for Alaska (2005) won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature and later became the ALA's most challenged book of 2015. Critics object to its frank depictions of alcohol, sexual activity, and teenage grief. But the novel's frank treatment of loss—and its refusal to sanitize the consequences of adolescent choices—is precisely what has resonated with millions of young readers. It was later adapted into a Hulu miniseries in 2019.

The Fault in Our Stars (2012), about two teenagers with cancer who fall in love, became one of the best-selling books of the 21st century, with an estimated 20–50 million copies in print. It was adapted into a major motion picture in 2014 and earned Green a spot on TIME's 100 Most Influential People list that same year.

Mental Health and Advocacy

Green has OCD and anxiety, and has spoken openly about how these conditions influence his writing. Turtles All the Way Down (2017) draws directly on his experience of obsessive thought spirals, making it one of the most authentic fictional portrayals of OCD in young adult literature. Beginning around 2022, Green became a prominent advocate for global tuberculosis eradication, pledging more than a million dollars annually to fund TB treatment in the Philippines and co-authoring a nonfiction book on the subject.

Fighting Book Bans

When Looking for Alaska was targeted for removal from Orange County, Florida schools in 2022—the district where Green grew up—he responded publicly and forcefully. In November 2023, he joined Jodi Picoult, Penguin Random House, and other publishers in a federal lawsuit against Iowa's library restriction law. In August 2024, he filed a separate lawsuit challenging similar provisions in Florida. For Green, the fight against book bans is inseparable from the fight for the young readers his books were written to reach.