DURING A WEEKEND that packed downtown Indianapolis with people attending a trio of celebratory events—a Shamrock 5K, the Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament, and Comic Con—hometown author John Green filled the cushioned seats of Indiana Repertory Theatre on Saturday for two discussions about his newest book, Everything Is Tuberculosis. And while that might sound like the most depressing social function on the calendar, Green’s talk was surprisingly uplifting—just as lively, satisfying, and hopeful as anything else that happened that day in the Mile Square.
Hosted by Loudmouth Books and introduced by its owner, Leah Johnson, the event drew an adoring crowd of Green’s fans who hung onto every word as the author of young adult titles such as The Fault in Our Stars, Looking for Alaska, Turtles All the Way Down, and Paper Towns delivered sobering statistics about his latest obsession, a disease that is the world’s deadliest (particularly in poor areas such as the Global South) in spite of being curable and preventable. With his signature blend of sharp intellect and relatable humanity, Green first thanked the audience gathered for the first of two IRT shows for “doing the heroic work of getting out of bed and going outside” before turning the screen of his phone toward the audience to share a video call.
On the other end of the call was Henry Reider, a TB survivor in Sierre Leone who is the real-life central character in Everything Is Tuberculosis (subtitle: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection). Green met him a few years ago on a Partners in Health tour of Sierre Leone’s Lakka Government Hospital, where Reider was a patient. The two became friends. In time, the writer whose teenage protagonists have dealt with issues ranging from cancer, to obsessive-compulsive disorder, to substance abuse, decided that Reider and the “disease of injustice” that had impacted his life would become the topic of his next book. “He started asking me to tell his story,” explained Green, who was joined onstage for a Q&A with podcast host and fellow Hoosier scribe Ashley C. Ford (Somebody’s Daughter).
Ford wryly began the interview with a question that many who have followed Green’s literary trajectory might want to ask: “Why do you keep writing about illness, John?”
Green answered the question with a question. “Why is everyone else not? It kills 90 percent of us … It shapes our world.” As for tuberculosis, he can cite compelling reasons in the form of hard statistics (the disease killed 1.25 million people in 2023) and personal anecdotes (his great uncle died of tuberculosis at the age of 29 in a sanatorium) on why he chose to write about it. The most tragic thread of the story is that even though TB is treatable, it is often thought of as a problem of the past or somewhere far away—so it became, as Ford described it during Saturday’s Q&A “a horribly unacknowledged” health crisis.
After telling his young audience to hold on to hope in a world that feels bleaker by the day, Green ended his talk with a clear call to action. “Reach out to our representatives and tell them we have to restore funding for tuberculosis prevention,” he said, specifically urging his young audience to contact Indiana Senator Todd Young. “When we pay attention, we solve problems.”
