New York Times Bestselling Author John Green will be in Tucson Thursday, Oct. 8
For over two decades, author John Green has captivated audiences with his poignant stories about grief, guilt, finding meaning and the complexities of love.
Green, the Internationally bestselling author behind books such as “Looking for Alaska,” “Paper Towns,” and “The Fault in Our Stars,” will be taking the stage in Tucson on Oct. 8, with New York Times bestselling author Kathleen Glasgow to celebrate the release of his debut adult novel, “Hollywood, Ending.”
The event will take place at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd., at 6 p.m. and the pair will discuss the book, answer audience questions, and lead audience participation activities.
“Hollywood, Ending,” which was released just last month on Sept. 22, follows rising young actors Kai Laramie and Juniper Castillo after they are cast in the biopic, “Andy Warhol Never Gets Old.”
“The movie starts to get a lot of attention,” Green said. “And as it does, they also start to get a lot of attention in ways that are fun and exciting, but also pretty difficult.”
Green said the themes were inspired by his own experiences with fame and publicity.
“I was certainly thinking a lot about my own experiences in Hollywood, seeing the machine that commodifies human experience and turns it into movie tickets. I was also thinking about the fact that these are no longer questions primarily for celebrities because we all participate in the machine now,” Green said. “We all trade our private lives in exchange for public attention on Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else, and we get something in that exchange, but it also costs us quite a lot. I wanted to look at both the costs and the benefits.”
As he was writing though, Green said he realized he was also writing about love- specifically finding love and relationships that give you strength to endure life’s hardest moments.
“One of the things that's so hard about being in your 20s is that you're trying to find those lifelong relationships that can sustain you, and you may not have them yet,” Green said. “I certainly didn't have them, these characters don't have them, and that makes going through difficult situations almost impossible.”
The parallel narrative within the novel examines Warhol’s life at the dawn of celebrity culture and the delicate balance between a public and a private life.
“Warhol saw so much of our world coming. He saw the two-dimensionalization of human experience coming, he saw that everything was going to be screen-based, he saw the proliferation of commercial images coming. But also, he was a world famous artist who still had a private life,” Green said. “I wanted to contrast what was possible at the end of Warhol's life with what's possible today.”
"Hollywood, Ending," by John Green.
“Hollywood, Ending” is also Green’s much-anticipated return to fiction after nine years. In that time, Green has explored writing in other genres, publishing two non-fiction books: “Everything is Tuberculosis,” and "The Anthropocene Reviewed.”
“I don't spend a lot of time thinking about where my stories are going to live in a bookstore. I didn’t write a history of tuberculosis, thinking, "Oh, this will live in the medical history section,” he said. “I want to follow my creative interest and passion. In this novel, I wanted to write about those thrilling, terrifying years of early adulthood when everything is still possible, and you have to start to make choices about what kind of life you're going to have and and who you're going to do life with.”
Thursday will be Green’s first time doing a professional event in Tucson, which he said is part of the reason for bringing his book tour to the city.
“It's really exciting for me to be in new places and meet new readers who maybe haven't had a chance to see me on tour before,” he said. “But also, there's great bookstores in Tucson and it's just a great literary culture, so it seemed like a really fun place to go.”
Attendees can expect much more than a standard book reading, Green said. The evening will have everything from an audience Q & A, a miniature press junket, a conversation with author Kathleen Glasgow and an onstage chemistry read.
“We take two volunteers from the audience and we have them act out a scene from the movie that's inside of my book, so we get to experience a little bit of the joy of seeing my words come to life in the hands of young actors, and it's really fun,” he said. “It's going to be a fun night, and I feel so grateful to be able to do this. For many years I did tour events where between three and five people would come. This is a lot more fun.”
His favorite part of touring, Green said, is meeting with fans and readers who grew up with his books.
“It's so wonderful to be on tour- the 22 airports in 23 days part is not the most fun- but being on stage and being able to connect with readers is incredible,” he said. “It's such a privilege to have a seat at the table in young people's lives as they're forming their values. It is really fun to grow up with my readers and see them grow and mature as they enter adulthood.”
Tickets for the event can be found online through Barns & Noble, and are priced at $37.64. All tickets include an autographed copy of “Hollywood, Ending.”
“I'm really excited to be in Tucson,” Green said. “It should be a really fun night.”
