September 4, 2025
For its 2025 Student Life Lecture Board and Varner Vitality Lecture Series, Oakland University will welcome acclaimed author John Green to campus. The event, “A Conversation with John Green,” will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 25, in the Oakland Center Founders Ballrooms. It will be moderated by Mila Govich, an award-winning actor and special lecturer of theatre in Oakland University’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance.
Govich starred in the 2014 film adaptation of Green’s book “The Fault in Our Stars.” The novel and film adaptation were commercial and critical successes, leading Green to be included on Time magazine's 2014 list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
The talk will highlight Green’s career as a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been published in more than 55 languages, with more than 24 million copies in print. Green was the 2006 recipient of the Michael L. Printz Award, a 2009 Edgar Award winner and has twice been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Green's latest book, “Everything is Tuberculosis,” released March 2025, is an instant #1 New York Times, Washington Post, and Indie bestseller. Regarded as a timely and "highly readable call to action" in a starred Kirkus review, the book is a deeply human social and scientific history in which Green illuminates the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.
Since the mid-2010s, Green has been a prominent advocate for global health causes: he is a trustee for Partners In Health (PIH), supporting their goal of reducing maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, and has worked with PIH and a number of organizations in fighting tuberculosis worldwide.
Green’s other books include “Looking for Alaska, “An Abundance of Katherines,” “Paper Towns, “Turtles All the Way Down,” and “The Anthropocene Reviewed,” his first nonfiction book.
Several of Green’s works have been adapted for the screen. After the 2014 release of "The Fault in Our Stars," the summer of 2015 saw the premiere of a film adaptation of “Paper Towns,” starring Nat Wolff, Cara Delevingne and Justice Smith. In fall 2019, a limited series adaptation of “Looking for Alaska” was released on Hulu, starring Kristine Froseth, Charlie Plummer and Denny Love. A Netflix adaptation of “Let It Snow” followed, starring Isabela Merced, Shameik Moore and Kiernan Shipka.
Green and his brother Hank co-run the Vlogbrothers YouTube channel, which has spawned an active online-based community called Nerdfighteria and an annual telethon-style fundraiser called Project for Awesome. Nerdfighters have raised millions of dollars to fight poverty in the developing world and they also planted thousands of trees around the world in May of 2010 to celebrate Hank’s 30th birthday.
“A Conversation with John Green” is free and open to the public. There are no tickets, but registration is required. Attendees can submit a question that may be asked during John Green's moderated interview. If your question is selected, you will receive a signed copy of John Green’s latest book and VIP seating.
The event is sponsored by the Student Life Lecture Board, the Office of the Provost, The Honors College and the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine.
For further information and special accommodations, please contact the Office for Student Involvement by emailing osi@oakland.edu.