THE SHORT BIO
John Green is the Michael L. Printz Award-winning author of Looking
for Alaska and An
Abundance of Katherines. When he was little, he wanted to
be an earthworm scientist. (There is a word for such a person: oligochaetologist.)
But he killed off his entire earthworm farm due to his general inability
to care for pets. Later, he made a list of things he was good at. The
list included "telling lies" and "sitting." So he became a writer.
THE LONG BIO FOR BOOK REPORTS, THE INSANELY
CURIOUS, AND/OR STALKERS
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.)
QUESTIONS I'M OFTEN ASKED BY PEOPLE WRITING
PAPERS
This part of my web site used to be full of jokes and lies, but now
that people are trying to use the site as an actual resource for actual
research papers and book reports, I feel compelled to try to answer
more serious questions. Although there will still be plenty of lies!
And I will never tell you what's a lie and what isn't!
Q. Where do you get your ideas?
A. I have no idea. I really don't. All I know is that my books all start
with a person. (Alaska started
with Alaska; Katherines started
with Hassan.)
Q. How long does it take you to write a book?
A. Alaska took about four years.
Katherines about two and a half.
I am not a mathematician, but it seems to me that if I keep this up,
my next book will be written in one year, and the book after that will
be written in negative six months. I'm very excited about being able
to write a book in negative time.
Q. How old are you?
A. I'm 29. But knowing how rarely I update this page, I should probably
just say I was born in 1977.
Q. Were you a child prodigy like Colin Singleton?
A. No. I was a piss-poor student, actually. I wasn't even the best C-student
on my school's Academic Decathlon team. (But I was on the Academic Decathlon
team. NERD FIGHTERS!!!)
Q. What the hell is Nerd Fighters?
A. It's one of a billion inside Brotherhood
2.0 jokes.
Q. What happened to Alaska?
A. I really believe that your reading of a book I wrote can be just
as legitimate as my reading of a book I wrote. (It's possible you can
even read the book better than I can.) So I don't know anything more
about what happened to Alaska than you do. (I knew from when I started
the book that we'd never be inside Blue Citrus with her.)
Q. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
A. Try to experience a lot of heartbreak and woe. Ideally, there should
also be some weeping and gnashing of the teeth. That stuff will come
in handy later. But the most important thing is to read. That's true
whether you're an aspiring writer or a working one. Reading is the only
apprenticeship that writers have.
QUESTIONS ABOUT CONTACTING ME
Q. I notice that you recently declared email bankruptcy.
A. Well, that isn't a question, but it is nonetheless
true. I am not great about responding to emails, because I am a
hilariously slow email-writer. But I do read all of my emails.
Q. I notice that over there on the right side of this page, you list
three email addresses.
A. You sure ask a lot of questions that aren't questions. But yeah,
yeah. The "me" address is for things you would specifically like to
ask me. The "thebooks" email is for questions or comments about my books.
The "work" email is for you if you have a question or comment that in
some way involves publishing or media or appearances or whatever.
Q. Do you do school/library visits?
A. Not very often, but sometimes. Such inquiries can be sent to the
lovely kathryn hurley at kathryn.hurley --at-- us.penguingroup.com.
