Armistead Maupin

Launched in 1976 as a groundbreaking serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, Armistead Maupin’s iconic Tales of the City series has since blazed a trail through popular culture – from a sequence of globally best-selling novels to a 1993 Peabody Award-winning television series to an ambitious musical that had its world premiere at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater in 2011 and became the highest-grossing musical production in A.C.T.'s history. In 2019, a second critically acclaimed series based on the novels titled Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City premiered on Netflix. A graphic novel of Tales of the City with text by Isabelle Bauthian and art by Sandrine Revel published in 2022.

The book series now encompasses ten novels: Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Michael Tolliver Lives, Mary Ann in Autumn, and The Days of Anna Madrigal. Due out next year is Mona of the Manor (HarperCollins, March 5, 2024).

Maupin’s 1992 novel, Maybe the Moon, which followed the serio-comic adventures of a dwarf actress working in Hollywood, was named one of the ten best books of the year by Entertainment Weekly. The Night Listener (2000), a psychological suspense novel inspired by an eerie episode in Maupin’s own life, became a 2006 feature film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. In 2017 he wrote a memoir titled Logical Family which grew out of his critically acclaimed one-man show of the same name. Neil Gaiman said this about Logical Family; “Maupin is one of America's finest storytellers, and the story of his life is a story as fascinating, as delightful and as compulsive as any of the tales he has made up for us.”

In 1997 Maupin received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle of New York. In 2002 he was honored with the Trevor Project’s Life Award “for his efforts in saving young lives.” Maupin was the first recipient of Litquake’s Barbary Coast Award for his literary contribution to San Francisco. In 2012 he was awarded Lambda's Pioneer Award which is bestowed on individuals who have broken new ground in the field of LGBT literature and publishing. In 2014 he received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He also received the Visionary Award from the 2014 Outfest Legacy Awards for his collected novels and their  "...diverse, interconnected community of San Francisco bohemians -- which shaped our collective fantasy of what LGBT life is and could be...." Maupin is the subject of a documentary titled Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.

He lives in London with his husband Christopher Turner, a photographer.

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