Publishing is full of rankings, from power lists to best-dressed lists to under-40 lists. The CULT100 is different. There is just one criterion for inclusion—but it’s a high bar.

To qualify, a candidate must be actively shaping and changing our culture in real time. The people on this list represent five generations and hail from the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment. To put this group together, CULTURED‘s editors leveraged the full strength of our network, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to feel challenged, hopeful, and inspired.

Some members of the CULT100 are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the cultural encounters that stop us in our tracks. In a time of binary thinking, the creators featured in this year’s list are embracing contradiction, bouncing willfully between disciplines, and refusing to take no for an answer. They have guts, vision, and a potent cocktail of realism and optimism. None of them is shying away from the anxiety of our moment. Instead, they are thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. The good news is, their work makes us all a little bit braver, too.

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KYLE SMITH
JEM COHEN
Photography by JEM COHEN

LUCY SANTE

WRITER

The writer spent decades chronicling the emotional topography of urban life. More recently, she turned her unsparing eye on herself with a gut-punch of a memoir about transitioning at age 66. 

WHAT IS YOUR TRADEMARK? I’m known for writing about cities as experienced by the poor, in the past and in my youth—also about photography, also memoirs (I’ve written two). I have a lot of range, and most readers know me for one or two aspects—different combinations of aspects for different people.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR PRACTICE? It happens almost every time I sit down to write. Going into a work, I never quite know where I’m headed, exactly. I let my unconscious take the wheel for long stretches, and wind up taking turns I never anticipated.

"I want to see more attention to detail, more adventurousness, more of the music of language."

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF? I want to see more attention to detail, more adventurousness, more of the music of language. I want to see less short-sightedness, less virtuesignaling, less academic prose. We’re actually in a really good period for literature, but there’s so much being published it’s hard separating wheat from chaff.

IF YOU COULD ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESS TO A SINGLE QUALITY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? My memory.

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SAGG NAPOLI
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KYLE SMITH