News Archive

Armistead Maupin will deliver a UWA Extension Spring School Lecture on Wednesday, September 26, from 7.30-9pm.

Armistead Maupin has delighted millions, straight and gay, with his stories of swinging San Francisco. Though Maupin was one of the first of a new breed of openly gay authors, his appeal has always resided in his inclusiveness as a storyteller.

This is a rare opportunity to hear the wit and engaging stories of Armistead Maupin in an exclusive UWA Extension Spring School lecture.

For over thirty years his beloved characters from 28 Barbary Lane in the 'Tales of the City' series have cut an unprecedented path through popular culture from a groundbreaking newspaper serial to six internationally bestselling novels published in eleven languages, to a Peabody Award-winning miniseries.

‘From the beginning, I resolved to create a tapestry large enough to encompass all of humanity,’ Armistead Maupin says.

Maupin's latest work ‘Michael Tolliver Lives’ is a novel about the act of growing older joyfully and the everyday miracles that somehow make that possible.

Born in Washington D.C 1944, Armistead Maupin grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina. After graduating from the University of North Carolina he served as a naval officer in the Mediterranean and with the River Patrol Force in Vietnam.

He briefly worked as a reporter for a newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, before being assigned to the San Francisco bureau of the Associated Press in 1971. The climate of freedom and tolerance he found in his adopted city inspired him to come out publicly as homosexual in 1974. Two years later he launched his ‘Tales of the City’ serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, the first fiction to appear in an American daily for decades.

Armistead Maupin is also the author of the bestselling novel Maybe the Moon, which chronicles the misadventures of a dwarf actress working in Hollywood. He wrote the narration for the award-winning documentary ‘The Celluloid Closet,’ and was himself the subject of an hour-long BBC documentary; ‘Armistead Maupin Is a Man I Dreamt Up’. As a librettist, he collaborated in 1999 with composer Jake Heggie on ‘Anna Madrigal Remembers’ for mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade and Chanticleer, the classical choral ensemble.

Armistead Maupin’s New York Times bestseller The Night Listener created a sensation in the publishing world when its real-life origins were revealed in an article by The New Yorker and a follow-up investigation by ABC’s 20/20. The psychological suspense novel was inspired by Maupin’s longtime telephone friendship with Anthony Godby Johnson, a 14-year-old memoirist whose very existence Maupin began to question. ‘It was like living in the middle of a mystery novel,’ Maupin said. ‘Once it started happening I knew I had to write about it.’ He wrote the screen adaptation of The Night Listener, starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by Miramax pictures.

Maupin lives in San Francisco with his husband, Christopher Turner.

Venue: The Octagon Theatre, The University of Western Australia
Date/Time: Wednesday 7.30-9pm, September 26
Ticket price: Standard $39.
Our special 5 for 4 Offer applies to this lecture. If you book four people you get a fifth place free. Just select the 5 for 4 Offer option when enrolling.

BOOKINGS: UWA
Phone: 6488 2433 Fax: 6488 1066
Online: www.extension.uwa.edu.au
Email: [email protected]

Media references

Helena Bogucki (Marketing Coordinator, UWA Extension) 61 8 6488 6820