Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
SCAM ALERT: Someone is impersonating Francesca Rheannon and Writer’s Voice using thewritersvoicepodcast@gmail.com to solicit authors for fraudulent interviews and request payment. Writer’s Voice never charges authors or publishers for interviews. [Read the full scam alert.]
James Baldwin believed that love could be terrifying, but also our only hope. For Keith Haring, hope lay in art.
This week, I talk with Nicholas Boggs about Baldwin: A Love Story, his biography of James Baldwin told through four relationships that shaped Baldwin’s life and art. Boggs describes love as central not only to Baldwin’s novels but to his political writing, and traces his journey from a difficult Harlem childhood and the Black church to his role as a writer, messenger and witness.
All of Baldwin’s work was about love. All of his novels were love stories… And his nonfiction writings, political writings, were also about love.” — Nicholas Boggs
Then, I revisit part of my 2024 conversation with Brad Gooch about Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring. Haring challenged the boundary between high and popular art, from his subway drawings to the Pop Shop. Gooch talks about Haring’s collaborations, his determination to communicate across class and cultural lines, and the legacy of his belief in “art for everybody.”
“Keith did everything that he could do to blow that system [the art market] apart.” — Brad Gooch
Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.
Love good coffee? Want to support Writer’s Voice? Head on over to Larry’s Coffee using this LINK, and you’ll earn $30 for the show!
You might also like: DaMaris Hill, A BOUND WOMAN IS A DANGEROUS THING, Ta-Nahisi Coates, THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE
Tags: Black history, James Baldwin, queer artists, Keith Haring, Brad Gooch, Nicholas Bogss, queer writers, Writer’s Voice
Nicholas Boggs, Baldwin: A Love Story
James Baldwin wrote about race, sexuality and America with a piercing clarity. But beneath all of those subjects was another one, love. In Baldwin: A Love Story, Nicholas Boggs tells Baldwin’s life through four relationships that shaped both the man and the writer.
We talk about Baldwin’s difficult journey toward self-love, his bond with the painter Beauford Delaney, the lovers who influenced novels like Giovanni’s Room and If Beale Street Could Talk, and the complicated relationship between Baldwin’s private life and his public role as a witness to America.
We also talk about why Baldwin’s later work matters, and why, as Boggs says, we don’t have to imagine what Baldwin might say about many of the questions confronting us now. He was already writing about them. Baldwin A Love Story is Nicholas Boggs’ first book — and a New York Times bestseller.
Brad Gooch, Radiant
Keith Haring wanted art to belong to everybody. He drew in the New York subway, collaborated with graffiti artists and sold T-shirts and pins at his Pop Shop. And for that, much of the established art world treated him with suspicion.
In this excerpt from my 2024 conversation with Brad Gooch about his biography Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, we talk about Haring’s determination to break down the boundary between high art and popular culture, his collaborations with the teenage graffiti artist LA2, and the ideas behind Haring’s instantly recognizable visual language.
We also talk about Haring’s legacy, as an artist, an activist and an influence on later generations who share his belief in bringing art out of elite institutions and into public life.