It's the first major biography of James Baldwin in more than three decades.

Writer Nicholas Boggs offers an intimate portrait shaped by the people who inspired him.

Drawing on archival research, original interviews, and newly uncovered documents, Boggs traces four of Baldwin's transformative relationships that depict him not just as a fearless social critic, but as an emotional,

vulnerable man shaped by love. I recently spoke with Nicholas Boggs about his book, Baldwin,

a love story. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. In this book,

you structure Baldwin's life around four pivotal relationships. Tell us about them. Well, the first one,

really the origin one, is the painter Buford Delaney, who he met in Greenwich Village when he was 16,

Delaney was 37. He came to call him his spiritual father. He changed his life. He allowed him to see,

as Baldwin put it, that a black man could be an artist. He'd never known that. He also introduced him

to blues and to jazz, music that was God-forsaken in his household, but that he said actually taught him

how to be a writer. He saw it was actually black music more than American literature that gave him his

voice. So Delaney was an important lifelong figure. You know, he went all the way through till his

death in 1979.

Baldwin sort of go back to him for advice.

Baldwin often would save him.

He would save Baldwin.

And they really formed this kind of alternative kinship structure that he needed.

He was very close to his family, but Baldwin lived so much of his life abroad,

as did Delaney, who followed him to Paris.

But Delaney was that sort of, that original, I would say, pivotal love figure outside of the family.

And what led you to frame his life and work through the lens of love rather than the more familiar

focus of civil rights or the politics of the time?

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