The archetype of the literary power couple remains a compelling trope, with pairs of writers intertwining their creative and private lives to critique and support one another. Emerging into this spotlight are novelist Marlon James and biographer Nicholas Boggs, whose recent works have earned them spots on two of Britain’s most esteemed literary prize shortlists. Or, less auspiciously, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. As Boggs points out with a laugh, “it’s really just the horse’s ass, isn’t it, a monumental horse sculpture dominates the room – or. Tried to track down Cazac, but was told he was most likely dead, boggs had suspicions that there was a love affair behind the collaboration. It haunted me: the idea that that could happen – and in a posh neighbourhood – was one of the things that certainly pushed me firmly into the closet.”.
James, the 55-year-old Jamaican-born author who previously won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, is back in the running with his latest novel, The Disappearers. The book is a dark, expansive examination of the horrors surrounding the Aids epidemic and the pervasive nature of homophobia. Boggs, his 53-year-old partner of nearly nine years, has secured a nomination for the Baillie Gifford Prize for his debut work, Baldwin: A Love Story. This biography represents two decades of research into the intimate life and creative journey of James Baldwin. Across his fiction, James has repeatedly excavated Jamaica’s histories of violence and political upheaval, from his debut 2005 novel John Crow’s Devil (famously rejected 78 times by publishers), to the gang warfare and state corruption of A Brief History of Seven Killings, which made him the first Jamaican to win the Booker prize. His sixth novel, grew out of a rumoured homophobic attack in a middle-class area of Kingston in the late 1980s, the Disappearers.
Reflecting on their joint success, James expresses a modest uncertainty regarding the “literary power couple” label, noting that he struggles to see himself and Boggs in the same vein as legendary literary pairs like Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. Boggs admits the experience is still fresh and that they are both adjusting to the public attention. Their mutual respect is evident; James recalls knowing the significance of the Baillie Gifford nomination immediately when Boggs was selected, while Boggs remembers the excitement in James’s eyes when the nonfiction shortlist was announced on October 1. Think Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne. “The Baillie Gifford’s a prize I know well,” James says. “So when Nick was on the shortlist, I knew what a big deal it was. I don’t think I’ve seen his eyes get quite that wide before.”. James, for his part, didn’t know Boggs was a writer prior to their first meeting. “I first heard about it when I was 21,” he says. “I knew it happened, I just couldn’t prove it.
The couple has been together since 2018 and has shared their apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for nearly a year. Their home is filled with artifacts reflecting their shared passions, including a 1938 portrait of James Baldwin by Beauford Delaney—the Harlem Renaissance artist and Baldwin mentor. James purchased the piece following his 2015 Booker victory, and it now stands in their living room alongside a large gorilla statue. The fashionable writerly enclave in Brooklyn, and I am sitting across from the pair at their apartment, it is a warm October morning in Williamsburg. Looking comfortable enough to have been there all morning, they are relaxing on a chaise longue. He picked up Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room for the first time when he was 50. “The first thing I thought was I could never have read this at 20,” he says. “I was so in the closet.”.
Their connection began not through the rarefied social circles of the publishing world, but via a common dating app. Both were in their 40s at the time, and Boggs, who was used to dating people outside the literary industry, lived only three blocks away. After a respectful, “chaste” start, the relationship evolved naturally over a summer. James jokingly credits his early romantic efforts to a trip to Buckingham Palace on their third date, where he claims they spent time in the Queen’s bathroom. Full of small corrections and private jokes, their exchanges have the easy rhythm of a long relationship. It’s always a great surprise,” James adds, boggs jokes. “No matter how many times you do this. But the worlds they each came from – and the experiences that inform their writing – are markedly different, their relationship may have brought them into the same orbit. Away from the scrutiny of family and friends in Jamaica, he only began to build a more comfortable queer identity after moving to Minneapolis to teach in 2007.
While their professional lives have converged, their backgrounds and the inspirations for their writing remain distinct.
Boggs, raised in Washington DC as the son of a civil rights attorney, developed a fascination with Baldwin during his college years.
This curiosity deepened 23 years ago when he encountered a reference in a 1966 text that led him to Yoran, who shared personal stories about Baldwin. Conversely, James’s work is deeply influenced by the rampant homophobia of 1980s Kingston. Throughout his career, he has explored Jamaica’s history of political and social violence, often drawing on rigorous research and personal interviews to reconstruct silenced incidents. “It was Yoran saying, ‘I’m alive, I’m in Paris, come on over, I have many stories to tell you about Jimmy,’” Boggs recalls. “That was 23 years ago, and it began a realisation that there were these untold stories in Baldwin’s life that needed to be unearthed.”. In the classroom he was “the school homo”; at church, he tried to become straight, growing up gay and closeted in 1980s Kingston.
Both authors are united by a drive to recover marginalized Black queer histories. Boggs notes that they both naturally focus on the “gaps” in historical narratives. During the development of The Disappearers, James faced a structural challenge until he incorporated a play into the narrative. Boggs became an essential sounding board for the project, encouraging James to commit to the inclusion of the 60-page play sequence, which also anchors parts of Boggs’s own research into Baldwin’s years in Turkey.
The couple’s work has garnered significant acclaim, recently punctuated by a rave review for James in the New York Times on September 25. Despite the high praise from a traditionally harsh critic, James initially found it difficult to accept, only believing the positive reception after being alerted by an author friend and visiting a newsstand to verify the piece himself. Beyond the accolades, both men share a profound sense of purpose. As Boggs puts it, surviving the era of Aids carries a responsibility to tell the stories of those who were lost, ensuring that the history of queer artists is preserved for the future. Crowded with art by African American and queer artists, from intimate, often erotic photography to paintings, its walls form something of a shrine to their work and interests.
