S8 Ep. 47: Nicholas Boggs on James Baldwin’s Love Stories

Biographer Nicholas Boggs joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss his groundbreaking new book, Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin to be published in three decades. Boggs recalls how finding Baldwin’s only children’s book in a Yale library as a college student led him to track down the volume’s illustrator, the French artist Yoran Cazac, Baldwin’s last great love. He talks about interviewing people who had never previously spoken about their relationships with the iconic author, including Cazac, whom at least one previous biographer had wrongly guessed was deceased. Boggs reflects on the importance of considering Blackness, queerness, and chosen family as central to Baldwin’s life and art. He discusses Baldwin’s youth in Harlem, his years in Europe and Istanbul, and his relationships with the painters Beauford Delaney and Lucien Happersberger, the actor Engin Cezzar, and Cazac, as well as many others. Boggs considers how Baldwin’s deepest friendships and romances influenced his life and work, including Another Country, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, and Giovanni’s Room. He reads from the book.

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the ⁠Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account⁠, the ⁠Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel⁠, and our show website: ⁠https://www.fnfpodcast.net/⁠

This podcast is produced by V.V. Ganeshananthan, Whitney Terrell, and Moss Terrell.

⁠Nicholas Boggs⁠

• ⁠Baldwin: A Love Story⁠

• ⁠Little Man, Little Man (ed.)⁠

• ⁠“They Will Try to Kill You”: James Baldwin’s Fraught Hollywood Journey | Vanity Fair⁠

• ⁠James Baldwin’s Love Stories | Vogue⁠

⁠James Baldwin⁠

• ⁠"Open Letter to the Born Again" | The Nation⁠

• “⁠If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?⁠” | The New York Times

• ⁠Giovanni’s Room⁠

• ⁠Another Country ⁠

• ⁠Notes of a Native Son⁠

• ⁠Go Tell It on the Mountain⁠

• ⁠Everybody’s Protest Novel⁠

Others:

• ⁠James Baldwin′s Turkish Decade by Magdalena J. Zaborowska⁠

  ⁠James Baldwin: A Biography by David Leeming

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