British · b. 1952
Clive Barker is an English writer, film director and visual artist, born in Liverpool. He first drew attention with the six-volume Books of Blood, short story collections published in 1984 and 1985, which Stephen King praised as the future of horror. He went on to write the novels The Damnation Game, Weaveworld, Cabal, The Great and Secret Show, Imajica and Everville, as well as the children's fantasy The Thief of Always. He moved to California in the 1980s. Barker wrote and directed the film Hellraiser (1987), based on his novella The Hellbound Heart, which led to a long film series and made the Cenobites a lasting part of horror. He also directed Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions. He paints and draws, and his artwork has been shown in galleries. Openly gay, he brought sexuality and the body into horror and dark fantasy in ways the genre had mostly avoided, and his ambitious, large-scale novels widened what fantasy could attempt.