John Green is a writer living in Indianapolis, Indiana (by way of New York and Chicago) with his outrageously wonderful wife, Sarah. John's first novel,
Looking for Alaska, was published in 2005. It won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult literature, was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, and received many other accolades, which are discussed at some length here. The movie rights to Looking for Alaska were acquired by Paramount, and Josh Schwartz (creator of The O. C. and a very nice guy) is currently working on the screenplay. It has also been translated into 13 languages.
John's second novel,
An Abundance of Katherines, came out in September 2006. Katherines was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and was also a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. More about Katherines
here.John grew up in Florida before moving to Alabama to attend boarding school--and yes, that school bears some physical resemblance to Alaska's Culver Creek. After graduating from college in 2000, John worked for six months as a student chaplain at a children's hospital. It was there that he started thinking about last words and the book that became Looking for Alaska.
John lived for several years after that in Chicago, where he worked for
Booklist Magazine, a fantastic book review journal. While there, he reviewed hundreds of books of all varieties--from picture books about Confucius to romance novels about Confucius (really!). His reviewing specialties included the literary fiction, books about Islam, and books about conjoined twins. John has read 11 books about conjoined twins (there are, it is worth pointing out, more books about conjoined twins currently in print than there are actual conjoined twins currently alive. In this sense, conjoined twins are like serial killers). John's book criticism has also appeared in The New York Times Books Review.
John has also written for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and for Chicago's public radio station, WBEZ. If you want to be inundated with jokes about John's ex-girlfriends,
peruse the "On the Radio" archives. Katherines readers will be unsurprised to learn that John often writes about trivial intellectual pursuits for
mental floss magazine.
What else? John and his brother Hank created the year-long video blog
Brotherhood 2.0. He is a total Dumpee. He likes sushi and country music and Nintendo. (Note: Those words, in that order,
have never appeared on the Internet.)
