Armistead Maupin coming to Birmingham

In his first ever UK tour, the bestselling, much-loved author will talk about his life. The tour will reach Birmingham’s Town Hall on Wednesday.

Maupin has been blazing a trail through US popular culture since the 1970s, when his iconic and ground-breaking series Tales of the City was first published as a column in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The novel series has been taking the literary world by storm ever since and was recently adapted by Netflix into a critically acclaimed new series, starring Laura Linney, Olympia Dukakis and Ellen Page.

Fans can join America’s ultimate storyteller as he recounts his favourite tales from the past four decades, offering his own engaging observations on society and the world we inhabit.

Maupin took Tales of the City to the San Francisco Chronicle after another paper folded. “I had done them for a weekly newspaper in Marin County – they were standalone stories.

"The first one was Mary Ann Singleton at the Marina Safeway. And the paper folded after about four episodes, so I decided to take it to the Chronicle as a proposal.

"And they asked me to do it five days a week. I just had to say that I could, even though I had no idea how I would.

"I would take two of the characters and put them in Mrs Madrigal’s kitchen and have them talk to each other. And it would grow out of that.

"To this day it’s kind of how I plot anyway. You have to write a story into the unknown and see where it takes you.”