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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Justyna Gudzowska
Photography by Justyna Gudzowska

Patrick Radden Keefe

Writer

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, ALBUM, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE?

As a kid, I had a print of Paul Klee’s Sinbad the Sailor on my bedroom wall. Then, it felt like a metaphor for adolescence. Now, more like a metaphor for my career.

WHAT’S SOMETHING PEOPLE GET WRONG ABOUT YOU?

Given the darkness of a lot of my writing, I have a jarringly sunny disposition.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU SURPRISED YOURSELF IN YOUR WORK?

Anytime I’m working on an article or a book and start piecing my reporting together into a narrative, that process is full of ecstatic surprise. It’s like making a collage, or a jigsaw puzzle, finding the exact right spot for each clue or revelation. When the pieces finally click into place, my heart races. I should keep my voice down because a lot of writers hate the writing part, but I love it.

“If you’re writing the kind of story that could just as easily be farmed out to an A.I., you’re doing it wrong.”

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS YOUR BIGGEST CONTRIBUTION TO CULTURE?

Bringing the word “skulduggery” back into general circulation (a work in progress).

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SEE MORE OF IN YOUR INDUSTRY? LESS OF?

More: viable business models to sustain heavily reported narrative journalism. Less: If you’re writing the kind of story that could just as easily be farmed out to an A.I., you’re doing it wrong.

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