Armistead Maupin's chronicle of life in 1970s San Francisco, Tales of the City, has been named Britain's favourite gay novel in a public poll.
Tipping The Velvet came second in the poll
The six-volume series was chosen by members of the public as part of the Big Gay Read competition.
"It's wonderful to know that the joy and fulfilment I've found as a gay man has somehow contributed to the joy and fulfilment of others," said Maupin.
He will collect his award at Manchester's Queer Up North festival.
Tales of the City started life as a daily serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, before being collected into a novel in 1978. Five more books followed.
The novels have sold millions of copies worldwide, and were turned into a TV mini-series in the 1990s.
TOP FIVE GAY NOVELS
Armistead Maupin Tales of the City
Sarah Waters Tipping the Velvet
Jeanette Winterson Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
Jackie Kay Trumpet
Sarah Waters Fingersmith
Maupin faced strong competition from British writers for the prize. Sarah Waters' novel Tipping The Velvet took second place, and Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winner The Line of Beauty, was eighth.
Waters is the only author to have two books in the top ten, with Fingersmith taking fifth place.
Most of the winning novels have been adapted for television, including Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Jake Arnott's The Long Firm.
Annie Proulx's short story Brokeback Mountain, which became the Oscar-winning film of the same name, also made an appearance, at number seven.
25,000 people voted in the poll, which was a joint project between Manchester, Salford and Blackpool libraries, Commonword and Time to Read.