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Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961) was an American poet, author of horror and weird fiction stories, sculptor, and artist.

In the first half of the 1930s, he was one of the most active contributors to the cult literary magazine Weird Tales. Along with Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Robert Irvine Howard, Smith is one of the most prominent authors of American weird fiction of the 20th century, influencing the development of science fiction and horror as we know it today. Smith expanded the universe of The Cthulhu Mythos to include several ancient deities, including a Great Ancient One called Tsatoggua, as well as the grimoire The Book of Ebon and the treatise The Papyri of Pnomah, and his friendship and correspondence with Lovecraft enriched the work of both writers.

Clark Ashton Smith was a master of words who had a remarkable talent for creating bizarre worlds full of ancient deities, magic, death, miracles and adventures, and, like no other, he was able to open up the vast immensity of outer space and the gloomy visions of the dark corners of the Earth we know. The writer has a unique picturesque style and a surprisingly rich figurative language, which makes his works an outstanding phenomenon in the literature of the twentieth century. The storylines, locations, and characters of some of Smith's stories have become part of the world of the iconic Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game, and the aesthetics of his texts, paintings, and sculptures inspire the work of contemporary musicians and artists.

All his life, Clarke Ashton Smith considered poetry to be his vocation, and this love of artistic imagery is clearly felt even in his prose works. Although they did not bring the author wide recognition during his lifetime, they became a source of inspiration for many contemporaries and followers. Thus, Smith fulfilled his own statement with his work: "A true poet is not a creation of an era, he creates his own era."