Updating the literary tradition of Dickens and Thackeray, Maupin's serial fiction afforded a mainstream audience of millions an unprecedented glimpse of gay and straight characters experiencing life on equal terms. To date, Maupin's books have been translated into ten languages. His most recent novel, Maybe The Moon, is currently being developed as a motion picture. 

Maupin has served as executive producer on both television adaptations of his novels. He wrote the narration for the award-winning documentary, "The Celluloid Closet," and was himself the subject of the hour-long BBC documentary, "Armistead Maupin is a Man I Dreamt Up." He lives in San Francisco, where he's at work on a new novel, Almost Anyone. 

"While I'm widely recognized as an author who is gay," states Maupin, "what I'm most proud of is that with Tales of the City I created a very large canvas and I included everybody in it. That, of course, meant gay men and lesbians and transsexuals and heterosexuals and bi-sexuals, the whole world. I've always looked at that as my greatest accomplishment." 

There is a particularly poignant scene in "More Tales of the City," which Maupin readily states "is a very personal moment for me. In the story, Michael Tolliver writes to his parents and tells them that he is gay. That letter, in fact, was the letter I wrote to my own parents. And the way they read it was by reading my column in the newspaper. They subscribed to the Chronicle in an effort to keep up with the serial and when they arrived at that particular episode, they realized that it was so directly from my heart that it had to be about my own experience." 

"I have used 'Tales' over the years to contain pain and to explain it to myself. During the time I was writing the column, I had a way of both expressing my pain and disguising it in such a manner as to make it safe to talk about." 

"What I was feeling in 1977," he continues, "was a feeling of enormous joy and liberation because I had lived so long with a secret and I had found a place, a city where people generally did not consider your sexuality in measuring your worth. And that discovery was absolutely central to my life and to my work. It wasn't until I came out of the closet that I began to explore all the dimensions of writing."