A new biography of esteemed writer James Baldwin is hitting shelves soon.
PEOPLE can exclusively share the cover of Baldwin: A Love Story, forthcoming this summer from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers. Written by scholar Nicholas Boggs, the biography examines four of Baldwin’s most intimate personal relationships.
The author and activist is best known for novels like Giovanni’s Room and If Beale Street Could Talk, as well as nonfiction work like The Fire Next Time and Notes of a Native Son.
Baldwin: A Love Story delves into the overlapping stories of several of the author’s most impactful relationships, including with Beauford Delaney, the Black American painter who was also Baldwin’s mentor; Swiss painter and lover Lucien Happersberger; Baldwin’s muse and last great love French artist Yoran Cazac and Turkish actor Engin Cezzar.
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Pulling from new archival material, original research and interviews, the book — the first major biography of Baldwin in three decades — studies the cultural, artistic, political and erotic aspects of these relationships and their impact on Baldwin’s work, the civil rights movement and overarching queer and Black literary histories.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Ilyon Woo, author of Master, Slave, Husband, Wife calls the book “A virtuosic feat of literary imagination, rhapsodic, and transportive … fast-paced and, at times, movingly tender, with love palpable throughout, the total effect is symphonic. This book deserves a standing ovation.”
Kai Bird, whose American Prometheus also won the Pulitzer Prize, says the book is “a formidable achievement, beautifully written, engrossing, and extremely intimate,” adding that the biographer’s “wild and most improbable treasure hunt” to uncover who Baldwin truly was “unearths more than one poignant love story. James Baldwin’s life is revealed in all its triumphs and agonies.”
Boggs, the recipient of the 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, also helped republish Baldwin’s only children’s book, Little Man, Little Man, in 2018. Written with Cazac and first published in 1976, the picture book was written for Baldwin’s nephew, Tejan Karefa-Smart.
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“It wasn’t like anything else he’s written, and the more I read it, it wasn’t like anything else I’d read,” Boggs told the New York Times of the picture book in 2018.
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Baldwin: A Love Story is an important addition to the author’s acclaimed legacy.
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“This book magnifies our understanding of one of the major literary and cultural figures of the twentieth century, whose contributions only continue to grow in influence,” an official synopsis reads.
Baldwin: A Love Story will be published on Aug. 19, 2025 and is now available for preorder, wherever books are sold.
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