MARQUETTE, Mich. (WZMQ) – NMU kicked off a new wellness campaign for the winter semester, ‘Be Well in Winter‘. To celebrate its launch, the student organization Platform Personalities hosted a fireside chat and Q&A with digital creator and author John Green.
Green is a Young Adult and Non-fiction writer known best for his novels, The Fault in our Stars, and Looking for Alaska. Green is also a digital creator on YouTube with Vlog Brothers and CrashCourse.
The event was sold-out, with over 800 guests in attendance. Bailey Gomes, president of Platform Personalities led a conversation on mental health and using art as a creative outlet in the winter.
“He is so well known for writing about mental health in a very healthy way in his books, in a way that helps to deconstruct some of the stigma around things,” Gomes said. “When I thought of a mental health speaker who would be IT to bring here, that was definitely who I thought of.”
With help from the NMU Foundation and the Wellbeing Center, Gomes said Green was one of their dream spears to kick off the campaign. Green’s work commonly talks about the struggles young adults face with mental health and works to destigmatize them.