John Michael Green (born August 24, 1977) is an American author of young adult fiction and a YouTube video blogger and creator of online educational videos. He won the 2006 Printz Award for his debut novel, Looking for Alaska, and reached number one on a New York Times Best Seller list with The Fault in Our Stars in January 2012.
Green was born in Indianapolis to Mike and Sydney Green and his family moved three weeks after he was born to Orlando, Florida. He attended Lake Highland Preparatory School and Indian Springs School (which he later used as the main setting for Looking for Alaska), a boarding and day school outside of Birmingham, Alabama and graduated from Kenyon College in 2000 with a double major in English and Religious Studies. He has spoken about being bullied as a teenager and how it made life miserable for him.
After leaving college Green spent five months working as a student chaplain in a children's hospital while enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School (although he never actually attended the school). He intended to become an Episcopal priest, but his experiences of working in a hospital with children suffering from life-threatening illnesses inspired him to become an author, and later to write The Fault in Our Stars.
Green lived for several years in Chicago, where he worked for the book review journal Booklist as a publishing assistant and production editor while writing Looking for Alaska. While there, he reviewed hundreds of books, particularly literary fiction and books about Islam or conjoined twins. He has also critiqued books for The New York Times Book Review and written for NPR's All Things Considered and WBEZ, Chicago's public radio station. Green later lived in New York City for two years while his wife attended graduate school.
Green lives in Indianapolis, Indiana with his wife, Sarah Urist Green. She previously worked as the Curator of Contemporary Art at Indianapolis Museum of Art, then left to start