Both “super fans” and newcomers to the bestselling young adult author John Green gathered in the Knapp Center for the 47th annual installment of the Bucksbaum Distinguished Lectureship Series April 2.
The evening was formatted as a moderated conversation with Assistant Professor of Literacy Education Lindsay Woodward, who covered Green’s expansive career in her introduction.
During the lecture, which was livestreamed at live.drake.edu and later posted online, Green offered insights on everything from navigating the transition to adulthood and the complexities of the internet to his global public health advocacy.
Green’s official visit to Drake began hours before he took the main stage. At a private afternoon roundtable in the Paul Morrison Room, he and his son, Henry Green, sat down with roughly 30 students and alumni.
The conversation between Green and the students chronicled his creative process and offered guidance to young people trying to find their path. Smiles stretched across faces, and laughter filled the air as students listened to Green’s responses, entertaining his humor.
Addie Cunningham, a public health student, asked Green how he gets people to care about pressing issues, referencing his latest book, “Everything Is Tuberculosis.” In the nonfiction work, Green explores failures in the healthcare system that enable diseases like tuberculosis, which has been curable since 1955, to kill 1.3 million people annually.
“We’ve known how to live in a world without tuberculosis for 70 years, and we choose not to live in that world, which is a very interesting choice,” Green said at the lecture that night.
Answering Cunningham, Green resonated with the frustrated, uncertain nature of her question.
“My son can tell you, I’m on the road a lot trying to get people to care about this stuff; it’s hard,” Green said. “It’s hard because there are so many damn things happening … and all the injustices are real, right? Like all the horrors that abound in every direction are real, but we can’t, each of us can’t equally address each horror, right?”
He commended young people, including Cunningham, for pursuing such diverse areas of study.
“You’re focused on public health,” Green said to Cunningham, “which is very exciting to me, but that means somebody else is gonna have to focus on climate, and somebody else is gonna have to focus on gender equity, and somebody else is gonna have to focus … we’re all gonna find ways to ally a lot with each other.”
On an individual scale, Green said attention, action and community engagement are of utmost importance.
“The first thing I’d say is that action follows attention, energy follows attention, so where you put your attention matters. That’s why — not to harp on this one particular issue — but that’s why the largest corporations in the world are spending unfathomable amounts of money to offer you Instagram and TikTok for free,” Green said in the roundtable.
Following the student roundtable, Green headed to a VIP reception with primarily members of the lecture committee before the talk officially kicked off a little after 7 p.m.
Neil Thompson, who has been on the committee since it was created in 1995 and chaired it for over 20 years, was among the audience members who didn’t know Green’s name well before the talk.
“John Green was not somebody that I was very familiar with,” Thompson said in an interview at the reception. “As it turns out, a book club I’m in, we read ‘Everything [Is] Tuberculosis’ just a couple months ago. Fabulous book. And so that’s another value of being both involved in the committee, but also as a community member. It’s very much a learning experience, introducing you to new voices, people you might not have heard before.”
While turnout fluctuates with the year and speaker, Thompson said the lecture’s reputation ensures decent attendance, though not always among students.
“We have always desired to have stronger student participation,” Thompson said. “Our student participation has kind of ebbed and flowed … but I think this one will be a big draw for students.”
The turnout that night proved Thompson correct. Thousands of people packed the Knapp Center, from students to community members.
Mariah McGuire attended both the reception and lecture, “representing the Central Iowa indie bookstore community,” she said, as the manager and book club coordinator of Dog-Eared Books in Ames, Iowa. She had the opportunity to speak personally with Green and his son at the reception.
“I’ve been a super fan since I was 12 years old,” McGuire said. “Hearing him speak about ‘Everything Is Tuberculosis’ is going to be one of the high points of certainly this year, if not my whole life.”
Sophomore Parker Shiltz was in attendance at the lecture as a fan, particularly of Green’s Crash Course history videos on YouTube. As a pre-pharmacy major, Green’s tuberculosis, science and medicine topics were also of special interest to Schiltz.
“I really liked learning about his work with TB,” Schiltz said. “I think it’s a very interesting disease … and that’s something that I’ve learned about in some of my past classes. It’s very interesting to see the real-world applications of this stuff.”
Also in attendance were members of Annie’s Foundation, a Johnston-based nonprofit organization dedicated to fighting school book bans by distributing free, diverse and frequently challenged books.
“We were just so excited to come see John Green tonight here at Drake University,” founder Sara Hayden Parris said. “He has written [one of] the most-banned books of the past school year, and we’re big fans of his work.”
Hayden Parris said Green’s first book, “Looking for Alaska,” is “the most banned book according to PEN America from 2024-2025.”
In Green’s concluding remarks, he spoke much about holding onto hope, which Hayden Parris found reminiscent of his fictional young adult works.
“He talked a lot about connecting with young people and giving them hope,” Hayden Parris said. “That is a message that a lot of teenagers need in books and particularly find in his books. That’s why we fight so hard to make sure that they’re available and accessible to young readers, because they do make a difference and they can make a difference.”
Speaking publicly about it for the first time, Green revealed his new book will explore the “interesting tension” between business demands and creative quality. The book is set for a Sept. 11 release.
