Nicholas Boggs (born 1973) is an American writer. He is the author of the 2025 biography of American writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin titled Baldwin: A Love Story. Boggs also co-edited the 2018 reprinting of Little Man Little Man a 1976 children's noel by Baldwin.
Early life and education Born in Washington DC, Nicholas Boggs was born in Washington, D.C. on October 17, 1973, and grew up in the Cleveland Park Neighborhood, the son of a civil rights lawyer and a music teacher. He was a celebrated professional boy soprano, performing at the Kennedy Center and elsewhere, and then a standout track and field athlete. Boggs was educated at Alice Deal Middle School and attended Woodrow Wilson High School before graduating from St. Alban's School in 1992. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1997, a Master of Fine Arts from American University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in English from Columbia University.
Career
Boggs is the recipient of a 2023 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Leon Levy Center for Biography, the Beinecke Library and Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program, and the National Humanities Center, as well as residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell.
Reception Charles Blow, writing in The New York Times, called Boggs' debut biography Baldwin: A Love Story "sensational", "stunning", with a writing style that "dazzles and awes", and also praised the book's comprehension and Boggs' willingness to explore Baldwin's queer identity. The Los Angeles Times described the book as being "lively and vigorously researched", while The Boston Globe wrote that "Boggs comes about as close as anyone has to wrapping his arms around Baldwin". In a review written for The New Yorker, the book was praised by Louis Menand for being multi-faceted and acknowledging Baldwin's politics in their entirety.
Awards and honours Baldwin: A Love Story was a New York Times Notable Book. In 2025, Time and The Atlantic named it among the year's top ten books. +Awards for Bogg's writingYearTitleAwardResult2025Baldwin: A Love Story John Leonard Prize Winner2025Kirkus PrizeFinalist2026Audie Award for History or BiographyWinner2026Israel Fishman Non-Fiction AwardWinner2026PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyWinner
Works
Biography
References