John Michael Green was born on August 24, 1977. Born to his parents Mike and Sydney Green in Indianapolis. His parents decided to move and start their life and new family in Orlando, Florida when John was still an infant. John wasn't an only child: he had a younger brother, Hank Green. John’s high school years where a little troubling and like any other social outcast, he was bullied throughout school.
Half way through school john begged his parents to let him change schools; “ I was a big nerd, so I was struggling socially at school. But I was also struggling academically, to a point where the course of my life was going to be set in a troubling direction”. Parents both worked for nonprofit organizations, his mother as a community
…show more content…
He had been writing for years and couldn’t make it work, mainly because of the guilt; what right had he, a healthy man in his prime, to write about dying teenagers? And then, he met someone who would change his life forever; Esther Grace Earl, the model for Hazel Grace Lancaster, a teenager suffering from thyroid cancer who came up to him at LeakyCon, a Harry Potter convention in Boston, and told him she liked his books. “I started talking to her mostly so I didn’t have to dance. It turned out she was not just a Nerdfighter but was involved in some of the core projects of the community. I stayed in touch with her¨(funauthors.org). Esther had all the traits Green would give his heroes; she was sarcastic, funny, furious and brave. He based one of his big characters off of Esther (Hazel Grace Lancaster). Hazel and Augustus poke fun at everything from their own illness to the dorky cancer-support group leader (based on Green himself) to the venue where they meet, a church called the Literal Heart of Jesus. He used Esthers sarcastic and funny side to form Hazel Grace and the way she reacts to