Nicholas Boggs
Nicholas Boggs is the author of BALDWIN: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin in over three decades, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 19, 2025. Drawing on new archival material, original research, and interviews, this spellbinding book reveals how profoundly his most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships shaped his life and work. It tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin’s relationships with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac.
Boggs also rediscovered and edited a new edition of Baldwin’s only children’s book, which was illustrated by French artist Yoran Cazac, LITTLE MAN, LITTLE MAN: A Story of Childhood (2018).
A three-time MacDowell Fellow, Boggs is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant as well as fellowships from the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Gilder Lehrman Center and Beinecke Library at Yale, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the 2024-2025 John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle, North Carolina.
Born and raised in Washington, D.C., he received his BA from Yale and his PhD from Columbia, both in English, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He now resides in New York City.
Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
BALDWIN: A Love Story
“Through this gloriously written and exhaustively researched page-turner of a biography, I’ve just spent the past few weeks moving through the 20th century with one of the world’s most brilliant writers. I’m better for it.” – Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award winner and MacArthur Fellow
“Magnificent…Nicholas Boggs’ Baldwin is a formidable achievement, beautifully written, engrossing, and extremely intimate. Boggs’ long journey as the biographer becomes a wild and most improbable treasure hunt where he unearths more than one poignant love story. James Baldwin’s life is revealed in all its triumphs and agonies.” – Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer – the inspiration for the Major Motion Picture OPPENHEIMER
“A virtuosic feat of literary imagination, rhapsodic, and transportive. Stunningly, it answers not only the question of who James Baldwin was but how he made and remade his art and his world. Fast-paced and, at times, movingly tender, with love palpable throughout, the total effect is symphonic. This book deserves a standing ovation.” – Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Master, Slave, Husband, Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom
James Baldwin’s LITTLE MAN, LITTLE MAN, edited by Nicholas Boggs:
“. . . it could scarcely be more timely. It’s arriving at a moment when children’s book authors and publishers are more frequently placing black and brown children at the center of narratives about everyday life, often taking on charged social issues like mass shootings, addiction and police violence against African-American youth.” – Alexandra Alter, The New York Times. Read the full review.
“Pulled from the past, this is a brilliant exploration of black childhood with profound emotional depth, drawn from the grace and struggles of community and reinforcing the truth that no one knows Harlem like Baldwin.” – Kirkus Reviews
“A vivid perspective that is both moving and enriching . . . It is a story of childhood, from a particular time and place, captured in colloquial language that is freighted at once with innocence, pain and tenderness.” – Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal
“A book to study and discuss at length. . . . The story’s profound depth stems from the implication that childhood innocence is a myth. Baldwin implies, as he does in his other work, that claiming innocence to racism (by adults and children alike) is a poor excuse for avoiding the difficult work required to grapple with it. Baldwin’s story of childhood forces the reader to grapple.” – Jenny Gapp, School Library Connection
Books, Films & Projects
Clips
Nicholas Boggs joins Bill T. Jones, Lucy Liu, & Marlon James at MacDowell Presents: A James Baldwin Centennial Event
Trailer for James Baldwin's "Little Man, Little Man," co-edited by Nicholas Boggs
James Baldwin: A Reading and Conversation with Nicholas Boggs & Nicole Terez Dutton
Eddie Glaude on James Baldwin, with Nicholas Boggs
News
People magazine announced the release of Nicholas Boggs’s new book, BALDWIN: A Love Story with an exclusive cover reveal! Read the story.
NY Times speaks with Nicholas Boggs about his discovery of James Baldwin’s long-forgotten book for children, LITTLE MAN, LITTLE MAN. Read the interview.
Publisher’s Weekly speaks with Nicholas Boggs about bringing James Baldwin’s LITTLE MAN, LITTLE MAN back into print. Read the interview.
Literary Hub speaks with Nicholas Boggs about the significance of James Baldwin’s LITTLE MAN, LITTLE MAN. Read the interview.