Charlotte Talks is headed to Hickory for a conversation with pioneering LGBT author Armistead Maupin.

The North Carolina-raised writer will join Mike Collins at Lenoir-Rhyne University as part of its Visiting Writers Series.

Maupin has been credited with changing how LGBT persons are portrayed in literature through his "Tales of the City" serial in the 1970s in the San Francisco Chronicle, and the subsequent book series of the same name that spanned four decades.

More recently, Maupin's memoir,...