“There are things that are more important than the news and what’s happening today. There are these archetypes which are part of the human imagination since humans were presumably imaginative. And I think that’s what [people] find touching, these eternal ideas. It’s one of the things that makes fantasy something that tends to stand the test of time because we’re reading, 50 years later, The Lord of the Rings.”

British writer, filmmaker, and visual artist

Clive Barker is a British writer, filmmaker, and visual artist who rose to prominence in the 1980s. He became widely known for the Books of Blood and for work that helped establish him as a leading horror author. His stories and ideas have been adapted for film, especially through the Hellraiser and Candyman series. Across his work, he is associated with horror in literature and on screen, and with a creative practice that extends beyond writing into filmmaking and visual art.