Stephen Barber’s work has been acclaimed as ‘brilliant, profound and provocative’ by The Times newspaper, and he has been called ‘a writer of real distinction’ by The Independent newspaper.

He has been awarded international prizes and awards for his work by the the Rockefeller Foundation, the Getty Program, the Ford Foundation, the DAAD Berlin Artists and Writers Programme, the Annenberg Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, the Japan Foundation, the British Academy, the Daiwa Foundation, the Saison Foundation, and the London Arts Board.  He has given many tv, radio and press interviews on his books, worldwide.

Stephen was born in Yorkshire, England in 1961 and has a PhD from the University of London. He began writing in 1990, and is the author of twenty books:

Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (1993: Faber UK, Farrar Straus & Giroux USA)
Fragments of the European City (1995: Reaktion UK/USA)
Weapons of Liberation (1996: Faber UK, Farrar Straus & Giroux USA)
Edmund White: The Burning World (1999: Picador UK, St Martin’s Press USA)
Artaud: The Screaming Body (1999: Creation UK/USA)
Extreme Europe (2001: Reaktion UK/USA)
Caligula: Divine Carnage (co-authored with Jeremy Reed: Creation UK/USA, 2001)
Tokyo Vertigo (2001: Creation UK/USA), Projected Cities (2002: Reaktion UK/USA)
Annihilation Zones (2002: Creation UK/USA)
Genet: Pages Torn from the Book of Jean Genet (2004: Reaktion UK/USA)
The Art of Destruction (2004: Creation UK/USA)
Tokyo Sodom (2006: Creation UK/USA)
The Vanishing Map (2006: Berg UK/USA)
Hijikata: Revolt of the Body (2006: Creation UK/USA)
Tokyo Slaughterhouse ( 2007:Creation UK/USA)
London Eyes (co-authored with Gail Cunningham: Berghahn UK/USA 2007)
Artaud: Terminal Curses (2008: Solar UK/USA)
The Tokyo Trilogy (Creation UK/USA).

    Stephen's books have been translated into many languages, most recently into Spanish and Turkish. He has also written many articles and essays for newspapers, magazines and art catalogues. He has given readings from his books at prominent international venues such as the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Setagaya Public Theatre (Tokyo), California Institute of the Arts (Los Angeles), New School for Social Research (New York), and Tate Modern (London).

    Cities of Oblivion, a theoretical fiction on transformations in vision, film and cities, will appear in 2009. Stephen is currently working on a new project entitled Abandoned Images, on derelict cinemas, for publication in 2010.

He is currently a Senior Researcher in the Visual and Material Culture research centre at Kingston University, England, and previously held posts at the University of Tokyo, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Berlin University of the Arts.