Author Armistead Maupin's works have been reaching a new national audience lately. The film version of his novel The Night Listener hit theaters nationwide last week, and the miniseries based on his Tales of the City novels is currently enjoying a successful rerun on Logo.

“I'm thrilled that Tales is reaching a new generation of gay people,” Maupin tells AfterElton.com. “The work manages to transcend the decades.”

Maupin's literary works are often autobiographical in nature, inspired by true-life events and real people he has known. “I mine my emotions for my novels,” he says. “It's not that I have a deeply confessional nature. I actually enjoy keeping part of my life private. But I do know that the closer you get to your own heart, the more believable your work is.”

A San Francisco resident since the early 1970s, Maupin's philosophy of gay life is decidedly more West Coast than East Coast. “People here are far more concerned with their insides than their outsides,” he says. “There's a lot more spiritual exploration, and the pursuit of happiness is not seen as something that involves brand names or hot bodies.”

As with many gay men, Maupin's early years were uniquely influenced by a close relationship with a special, older woman figure. In his case it was his maternal grandmother, Marguerite Smith Barton.

“She was my Anna Madrigal,” Maupin recalls, referring to the character from his Tales of the City novels. “Much of Anna's spirit came from my grandmother. Marguerite was a theosophist [a religious philosophy seeking universal brotherhood], and one of the leading women's suffragettes in England back around 1917. She read poems. She practiced vegetarianism before anyone else thought of it. She was a free spirit. My relationship with her was lovely.”

Maupin recalls an anecdote that reveals the Anna Madrigal in Marguerite: “When I was about 14, my grandmother and I were walking to a garden party. There was a woman in front of us in serious Joey Heatherton drag — lots of pink and ruffles, perfume, spike heels. My grandmother turned to me and said, ‘Any woman who is all woman, or any man who is all man, is a complete monster — unfit for human company.' That was quite a radical thing to say back in the 1950s.”

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