Nicholas Boggs is the New York Times bestselling author of Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of the iconic figure in more than three decades. He is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and 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, as well as residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell. Most recently he was the 2024-2025 John Hope Franklin Fellow at the National Humanities Center. 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.

Nicholas joined Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to talk about his path to writing nonfiction, what moved him to write a biography of James Baldwin, how he went about structuring the book, perseverance versus talent, research, how his background in music influences his writing, surprises in writing the Baldwin biography, writing what you don’t know, and more.

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(Recorded on December 19, 2025)

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Host: Marrie Stone
Music: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)