John Green

John Green was born in Indianapolis in 1977, grew up in Orlando and attended Indian Springs School outside Birmingham, Alabama. He graduated from Kenyon College in 2000 with a double major in English and religious studies, spent six months as a student chaplain at a children's hospital, and then worked at Booklist in Chicago while writing his first novel. Looking for Alaska (2005), based on his time at Indian Springs, won the 2006 Michael L. Printz Award.

An Abundance of Katherines (2006) and Paper Towns (2008) followed; Paper Towns won the 2009 Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Novel. He wrote Will Grayson, Will Grayson (2010) with David Levithan, each author handling one of two boys who share the name. The Fault in Our Stars (2012), about Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old in Indianapolis with thyroid cancer, became a 2014 film, and Turtles All the Way Down (2017) dealt directly with his own anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Since 2007 he and his brother Hank have posted videos as the Vlogbrothers, and they launched VidCon and Crash Course. His nonfiction includes The Anthropocene Reviewed (2021) and Everything Is Tuberculosis (2025). Hollywood, Ending (September 2026), about two young actors cast in a biopic of Andy Warhol, is his first novel written for adults.

The Fault in Our Stars is the best first pick: it is his most widely read novel, it stands entirely on its own, and it is the one most of his readers have in common, thanks partly to the 2014 film. Next, go back to Looking for Alaska, his Printz-winning debut, drawn from his own years at a boarding school in Alabama. Then read Paper Towns, which won the Edgar Award for best young adult novel, a mystery-writing prize.

Read Turtles All the Way Down when you want the book closest to his own experience. Adults new to Green can start instead with The Anthropocene Reviewed, adapted from his podcast, in which he rates facets of human life on a five-star scale, or with Hollywood, Ending.