Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring

A full-length biography of Keith Haring, written with access to the artist's archive, that follows his path from subway chalk drawings to the centre of the 1980s New York art world.

Gooch draws on that archive and on interviews with people who knew Haring to trace how he moved between street, club and gallery and between high art and popular culture. The book places him among contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Madonna. It runs to 512 pages, and the hardcover edition appeared in 2024. The book won the 2025 Lambda Award for Biography, and a television series based on it is in production, written and directed by Andrew Haigh.

Brad Gooch is a biographer, novelist and memoirist. His earlier biographies include City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara and Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, and he has also written the memoir Smash Cut. Radiant extends his work on twentieth-century American artists and writers to a visual artist.