Stephen Barber’s books have been acclaimed as ‘brilliant, profound and provocative’ by The Times newspaper in the UK, and he has been called ‘a writer of real distinction’ and ‘the most dangerous man in Europe’ by The Independent newspaper. The Sunday Times newspaper hailed his books as ‘exhilarating and disquieting’. In June 2020, David Peace wrote in the Times Literary Supplement: ‘Beginning with Artaud: Blows and Bombs, Stephen Barber has quietly, independently forged one of the most singular and enriching bodies of work in contemporary writing.’

Stephen has been awarded many grants, awards and prizes for his books, by such international bodies as the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio Program), the Getty Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Huntington Library, the Annenberg Foundation, the Paul Mellon Centre, the Leverhulme Trust, the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Academy, the Nathan Foundation, the Zeit Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the DAAD Programme, the Japan Foundation, the Saison Foundation, the Daiwa Foundation, among many others.

Stephen was born in the city of Leeds, in the North of England. He has a PhD, researched and written in Paris and awarded by the University of London, Queen Mary College. Subsequently, he has been a research professor and arts researcher at universities and art schools in many countries, such as the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, Sussex University in Brighton, the Berlin University of the Arts, the IMEC Institute in Paris/Caen, and the University of Tokyo and Keio University in Tokyo. From October 2012 to September 2015, and again in the Spring of 2019, he was a Fellow at the Berlin Free University’s International Research Centre in Interweaving Performance Cultures, and in 2024-25 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Studies at Heidelberg University. He is currently a Research Professor and Research Centre Director at the Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, he has written thirty-five single-authored books (twenty-five non-fiction books and ten fiction books). His published books are: Antonin Artaud: Blows and Bombs (1993: Faber & Faber UK, Farrar Straus & Giroux USA, Solar/University of Chicago Press USA), Fragments of the European City (1995: Reaktion UK/USA), Weapons of Liberation (1996: Faber & Faber UK, Farrar Straus & Giroux USA), Edmund White: The Burning World (1999: Picador UK, St Martin’s Press USA), Artaud: The Screaming Body: Recordings, Films, Drawings (1999: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), Tokyo Vertigo (2001, new version 2011: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), Extreme Europe (2001: Reaktion 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: Films of the Vienna Action Group (2004, new version 2020: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), The Vanishing Map (2006: Bloomsbury UK/USA), Hijikata: Revolt of the Body (2006, new version 2010: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), Tokyo Sodom (2006: Creation UK/USA), Tokyo Slaughterhouse (2007: Creation UK/USA), Tokyo Supernova (2007: Creation UK/USA), Artaud: Terminal Curses (2008: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), The Tokyo Trilogy (compendium edition of his three Tokyo novels: 2008: Creation UK/USA), Cities of Oblivion (2009: Future Fiction USA/UK), Abandoned Images (2010: Reaktion UK/USA), The Walls of Berlin: Urban Surfaces, Art, Film (2011: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), Muybridge: The Eye in Motion (2012: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), England’s Darkness (2012: Sun Vision Press USA/UK), Artaud: The Anatomy of Cruelty (compendium edition of his three books on Artaud’s work: 2013: Sun Vision Press USA), Performance Projections (2014: Reaktion UK/USA), Pierre Guyotat: Revolutions and Aberrations (2016: Vauxhall & Company UK), Berlin Bodies (2017: Reaktion UK/USA), Thatcher’s Tomb (2018: Infinity Land Press UK), White Noise Ballrooms (2018: Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press Switzerland/USA), Film’s Ghosts: Tatsumi Hijikata’s Butoh and the Transmutation of 1960s Japan (2019: Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press Switzerland/USA), The Projectionists: Eadweard Muybridge and the Future Projections of the Moving Image (2020: Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press Switzerland/USA), The Residues I /II (2020-21: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA) and Into the Wastelands (2025: Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press Switzerland/USA).

Four new, completed and forthcoming books – two fiction books and two non-fiction books – will appear in 2026: The Maledictions, Zoo-Hotel Deliria, Experimental Archives, and Wasteland/Apocalypse.

The Maledictions is an auto-fiction exploring the 1990 UK months between the Poll Tax riots and Margaret Thatcher’s fall, alongside that era’s transformations and upheavals in eastern Europe. Zoo-Hotel Deliria is an account of intensive hallucinatory experiences – near-death sepsis dreaming – in a brutalist hotel in Europe’s Deep North. Experimental Archives maps Stephen’s many investigations into extraordinary artists’ and writers’ archives across many countries, and also looks speculatively into the ‘post-digital’ futures of archives. Wasteland/Apocalypse is a non-fiction counterpart to Stephen’s fiction book Into the Wastelands, published in 2025, and focuses on the forthcoming pre-eminence of wastelands in future cities, under imminent ‘apocalyptic’ conditions of catastrophic urban transmutation.

In addition to those single-authored books, Stephen is also the co-author, translator, editor or co-editor of ten other books. He is the co-author with Jeremy Reed of Caligula: Divine Carnage (2001: Solar/University of Chicago Press UK/USA), the co-editor/co-author with Gail Cunningham of London Eyes (2007: Berghahn UK/USA), the co-editor/co-author with Anna Battista of Pasolini: The Massacre Game (2012: Sun Vision Press USA/UK), and the editor/translator of Artaud 1937 Apocalypse, Artaud’s letters from his journey to Ireland in 1937 (2018: Infinity Land Press UK, 2019: Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press Switzerland/USA) and of A Sinister Assassin, Artaud’s very last writings and interviews of 1947-48 (2022: Infinity Land Press UK, 2023: Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press Switzerland/USA): a book notably acclaimed by Patti Smith and many others. Alongside those two books of Artaud’s work which he translated and edited, he is also the editor of the other five books in the Diaphanes/University of Chicago Press seven-book series of English-language translations of Artaud’s work, published between 2018 and 2025 and concluding with Watchfiends and Rack Screams.

Stephen’s books have been translated into many languages, such as Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, French, Spanish, Russian and Turkish.

He has also written many essays, articles and short texts for art-magazines, newspapers, essay collections and arts publications worldwide, such as Artforum International, Art in America, Senses of Cinema, The Guardian, The Observer and The New Yorker. As listed above, a volume of his short writings from 1990 to 2020 was published, in two parts, in 2020 and 2021, by University of Chicago Press (Solar series), with the titles: The Residues I/II.

Stephen has travelled very widely for his work and has lived notably in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris and London. He has a beautiful black cat: Star.

He is currently working on a new book: Divine.