Clive Barker | |
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Barker at the Science Fiction Museum in 2007
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Born |
Liverpool, England |
5 October 1952
Occupation | Author, film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, playwright, painter, illustrator and visual artist |
Nationality | British |
Genre | Horror, fantasy |
Website | |
www |
Clive Barker (born 5 October 1952) is an English writer, film director, and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories, the Books of Blood, which established him as a leading horror writer. He has since written many novels and other works, and his fiction has been adapted into films, notably the Hellraiser and Candyman series. He was the Executive Producer of the film Gods and Monsters.
Barker's paintings and illustrations have been featured in galleries in the United States as well as within his own books. He has created original characters and series for comic books, and some of his more popular horror stories have been adapted to comics.
His archives have been a source of material for biographies and non-fiction books containing his personal essays, discussions of his fringe theatre work, interviews, and other content.
Barker was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, the son of Joan Ruby (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. He was educated at Dovedale Primary School, Quarry Bank High School and the University of Liverpool, where he studied English and Philosophy.
When he was three years old, Barker witnessed the French skydiver Léo Valentin plummet to his death during a performance at an air show in Liverpool. Barker would later allude to Valentin in many of his stories.
Barker is an author of contemporary horror/fantasy. He began writing horror early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1 – 6) and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game (1985). Later he moved towards modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld (1987), The Great and Secret Show (1989), the world-spanning Imajica (1991), and Sacrament (1996).