The Brilliance of BALDWIN: A Treasure Hunt of a Life Revealed
NICHOLAS BOGGS in conversation with LIONEL FOSTER
4:15 pm – 5:15 pm
31st Street & Barclay Street
Waverly Neighborhood
The New York Times named it a most anticipated book. Deemed a “monumental” biography by Zadie Smith and bearing witness to “his determination to leave something behind that would ultimately become our inheritance” by Lena Waithe, CityLit welcomes NICHOLAS BOGGS and his profound new work, Baldwin: A Love Story. The first major biography of iconic figure James Baldwin in over three decades brings Jimmy to life with a deeply intimate exploration of his personal and artistic relationships.
THE BALDWIN PRIZE, LIONEL FOSTER, joins Boggs in conversation about this work that shows for the first time “how Baldwin drew on complex structures within these relationships—geographical, cultural, political, artistic, and erotic—and alchemized them into art that spoke truth to power and had an indelible impact on the civil rights movement and on Black and queer literary history”. Baldwin, a contemplative examination and treasure hunt of a life revealed, magnifies our understanding of one of the major literary and cultural legends of our times.
Nicholas Boggs‘s writing has been anthologized in The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin, James Baldwin Now, and Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin, and he is co-editor of the 2018 edition of Baldwin’s only children’s book, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood. The recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program, among others, he lives in Brooklyn, New York. Lionel Foster is the founder of the Baldwin Prize, a scholarship and essay competition named in honor of James Baldwin. The Baldwin Prize helps high school students think, feel, and write their way through aspects of our shared humanity, inspired by James Baldwin’s practice. “A formidable achievement,” Bogg’s new work is an immersion in the creative journey of a staunch and significant literary figure.
STAY INFORMED
Nicholas Boggs was an undergraduate when he discovered James Baldwin’s out-of-print children’s book, ‘Little Man, Little Man‘, in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. After he tracked down its illustrator, the French artist Yoran Cazac, he went on to coedit an acclaimed new edition of the book in 2018. His writing has also been anthologized in ‘The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin’, ‘James Baldwin Now’, and ‘Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin’. He is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Beinecke Library and Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, and the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program, among other honors. He received his BA in English from Yale, his MFA in creative writing from American University, and his PhD in English from Columbia. Born and raised in Washington, DC, he lives in Brooklyn, NY.
nicholasboggs.com
Instagram: @nicholastboggs
Lionel Foster has written for Baltimore City Paper, The Baltimore Sun, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and other publications. In 2015, he founded The Baldwin Prize, a scholarship and essay competition for students at Baltimore City College High School that uses the literary arts to help young people learn how they want to show up in the world.
www.lionelfoster.com
The Baldwin Prize is an essay competition at Baltimore City College High School. Named after the writer and humanitarian James Baldwin, the Prize gives City College students an opportunity, during a pivotal stage of their development, to use the written word to explore their inner lives and how it connects with our shared humanity.
thebaldwinprize.org