Nicholas Boggs’s ”James Baldwin: A Love Story”

Host Eric Newman speaks with Nicholas Boggs about his new biography James Baldwin: A Love Story, which explores the influential Black and queer writer through the lens of his four pivotal romantic relationships. Drawing on newly available archival materials and original interviews, Boggs examines Baldwin's transformative connections with mentor Beauford Delaney, Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger, Turkish actor Engin Cezar, and French artist Yoran Cazac—relationships that served as creative engines throughout his career. Boggs's biography offers fresh insights into how Baldwin used personal experiences of desire and displacement to fuel his literary genius and diagnose America's racial pathologies.