Tales of the City

Armistead Jones Maupin, Jr. is an American writer, best known for his Tales of the City series of novels, set in San Francisco. Maupin was born to a conservative Christian family in Washington, D.C.. Soon afterwards, his family moved to North Carolina, where he was raised. He says he has had... storytelling instincts since he was eight years old. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he became involved in journalism through writing for The Daily Tar Heel. After earning his undergraduate degree, Maupin enrolled in law school, but later resigned from it. Maupin worked at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, a station then managed by future U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, who also delivered the station's well-known editorial segments throughout his management of the station in the 1960s. Helms nominated Maupin for a patriotic award, which he won. Maupin says he was a typical conservative and even a segregationist at this time and admired Helms, a family friend, as a "hero figure." He later changed his opinions dramatically — "I've changed and he hasn't" — and condemned Helms at a gay pride parade on the steps of the North Carolina State Capitol.
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Tales of the City refers to a series of eight novels written by American author Armistead Maupin. The stories from Tales were originally serialized prior to their novelization, with the first four titles appearing as regular installments in the San Francisco Chronicle, while the fifth appeared in... the San Francisco Examiner. The last three titles were never serialized, but were instead originally written as novels. Tales of the City has been compared to similar serial novels that ran in other city newspapers, such as Tangled Lives , Bagtime , and Federal Triangle . Characters from the Tales of the City series have appeared in supporting roles in Maupin's later novels Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener. The series opens with the arrival of Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman from Cleveland, Ohio, who went on vacation to San Francisco and impulsively decides to stay. She finds an apartment at 28 Barbary Lane, the domain of the eccentric marijuana-growing landlady Anna Madrigal.
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