Armistead Maupin was born in Washington, D.C. in 1944 but was brought up in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he served as a naval officer in Vietnam before moving to California in 1971 as a reporter for the Associated Press. In 1976 he launched his daily newspaper serial, Tales of the City, in the San Francisco Chronicle. The first fiction to appear in an American daily for decades, Tales grew into an international sensation when compiled and rewritten as novels. Maupin's six-volume Tales of the City sequence - Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, and Sure of You - are now multi-million bestsellers published in eleven languages. The first two of these novels were adapted as a pair of widely acclaimed television mini-series: the third, Further Tales of the City, is currently in production. Maupin's 1992 novel, Maybe the Moon, chronicling the adventures of the world's shortest woman, was a number one bestseller. He lives in San Francisco, California.