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Earlier this week, by email, Boggs talked about his work and why he can always count on excellent cheese to go with the wine at literary receptions. On Saturday, Boggs will read from the new book and discuss Baldwin and his legacy with old friend Nicole Terez Dutton, the Cave Canem Prize-winning poet and editor of the Kenyon Review. in English from Columbia University, Boggs became a professor of English at New York University. He's the recipient of numerous prestigious fellowships, and his writings on Baldwin have been included in 'James Baldwin Now' as well as 'The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin.' Last year, he signed a contract with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux to write a literary biography called 'James Baldwin: In the Full Light,' and he is at work on the manuscript during his Merrill residency. It's also true that, when Boggs chose 'Little Man, Little Man' as the subject for his senior thesis as a Yale undergrad, he essentially launched an entire career.Īfter earning an MFA in creative writing from American University and a Ph.D. These issues are integral at a time when the ongoing fight of civil rights groups such as the Black Lives Matter movement are particularly committed and active.įor Boggs's part, his efforts on behalf of 'Little Man, Little Man,' which includes the vitally evocative original illustrations by Yoran Cazac, was incredibly fulfilling. First of all, Baldwin has been his favorite author, going back to Boggs' public school days in Washington, D.C. for France in 1972 at the age of 24 to escape racial and sexual bigotry and establish life as a writer.

What he did do, in context, was oversee and co-edit, along with Jennifer DeVere Brody, the republication of the late James Baldwin's 'Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood' - a largely forgotten and long out-of-print book about the challenges and joys of a Black child growing up in 1920s Harlem.īaldwin, of course, was the visionary Black author whose works also include groundbreaking titles like 'Go Tell It On the Mountain,' 'Notes of a Native Son,' 'If Beale Street Could Talk' and 'The Fire Next Time.' And the republication of 'Little Man, Little Man,' which Baldwin regarded as a 'child's book for adults,' is an important rediscovery in a developing literary renaissance for writers of color.

Nicholas Boggs, January's Merrill House author, didn't actually write a children's book. Without disparaging the obvious importance of children's literature, it's accurate to say that not many would-be James Merrill House writers-in-residence jot down 'KID'S BOOK' on their applications.

Merrill House writer Nicholas Boggs talks about James Baldwin

Little man james baldwin