The Life and Loves of James Baldwin: Nicholas Boggs with Imani Perry

Award-winning biographer Nicholas Boggs joins National Book Award-winning Black studies scholar Imani Perry for a conversation about the life and loves of the great James Baldwin — and Boggs’ new book, Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of Baldwin in three decades.

From his groundbreaking, achingly beautiful novels to his searingly perceptive critiques of racial injustice and homophobia in America, from classics like Giovanni’s Room and Another Country to The Fire Next Time and No Name in the Street, James Baldwin was both a leading writer of his era and ahead of his time — a prophetic voice of 20th century American literature whose influence and thought continues to reverberate with stunning clarity and relevance. Mapping new terrain at the complex intersections of race, identity, love, and class in shimmeringly beautiful, dagger-like prose, Baldwin’s art and insight has never been more relevant.

Now — drawing on new archival material, original research, and interviews — biographer Nicholas Boggs reveals how profoundly Baldwin’s personal relationships shaped his life and work. Baldwin: A Love Story tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin’s art and his most sustaining relationships, alchemizing them into books that had an indelible impact on the civil rights movement, on Black and queer literary history, and American culture at large.

Join us for a special conversation as Boggs and Perry plumb the depths of Baldwin’s writing, life, and legacy — and find out what made him not only a major literary figure of the 20th century, but a cultural icon who cut to the core of the American experience.