American writer and activist Armistead Maupin was BOTD in 1944. Born in Washington, D. C. to a prominent Southern Confederate family, he was raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. After graduating from the University of North Carolina in 1966, he worked for Republican Senator Jesse Helms, whose conservative politics he later disavowed. He then joined the U.S. Navy, serving in the Vietnam War as a cadet and later as a civilian volunteer. After his discharge from the military, he worked as a journalist in Charleston, South Carolina in 1970, before being reassigned to San Francisco. He finally came out as gay in 1974, enthusiastically embracing San Francisco’s burgeoning gay scene and befriending Christopher Isherwood, who encouraged his early attempts to write fiction. In 1976, he began writing a fiction serial for the San Francisco Chronicle, based on his experiences as a single gay man. Titled Tales of the City, it chronicled the adventures of Mary Ann Singleton, a naïve Mid-Western woman recently arrived in San Francisco, her gay friend Michael “Mouse” Tolliver and their eccentric trans landlady Anna Madrigal. The column quickly developed a cult following, and was published as a book in 1978, becoming an international bestseller. Five sequels followed throughout the 1980s, tracking the characters through the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the Reagan administration. The series became a cornerstone of contemporary gay literature, delighting and inspiring generations of readers with their witty and humane presentation of LGBTQ life. A 1990s television adaptation, starring Olympia Dukakis as Mrs Madrigal, was also successful, helping launch the career of Laura Linney as Mary Ann. Maupin unofficially retired the series in the 1990s to pursue other projects, publishing the novels Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener. He returned to his Tales of the City characters in 2007 with Michael Tolliver Lives and two further volumes, exploring Mary Ann and Mouse in middle-age and Mrs Madrigal in graceful decline. In 20111, the original Tales of the City novel was adapted into a musical by Jake Shears and Jeff Whitty, starring Justin Vivian Bond as Mrs Madrigal. A TV reboot of the series was released in 2018, starring Dukakis, Linney, Murray Bartlett and Elliot Page, attempting (with mixed success) to bridge Maupin’s sensibility with Millennial-era sexual politics. Maupin was in a relationship with Terry Anderson for 12 years, living between San Francisco and New Zealand. In 2007, he married his long-term partner Christopher Turner. His 2017 memoir Logical Family focused on the importance of friendships for LGBTQ people to supplement (or substitute) biological family relationships. He and Turner live in London with their dog Philo.