Movers and Shakers: The 40 Most Exciting Soulful Artists of 2003

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Susan Griffin
Mistress of History
Susan Griffin has penned 19 books, all of which read like installments in a deep, lively conversation between the personal and the political, the past and the present. Her 1978 book Woman and Nature is a meditation on the strikingly similar ways Western culture has dominated (and devastated) its females and its landscape. A Chorus of Stones, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, explores the mind-set of men who create weapons of mass destruction and connects these public issues with violence and silence in her own family. With an Emmy for her play Voices, and a MacArthur Grant for Peace and International Cooperation under her belt, Griffin recently published The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues, which controversially argues that courtesans?the great mistresses and ?kept women? of the premodern era?were often the most brilliant and influential women of their day. In everything she touches, Griffin makes history vivid and personal, while casting a powerful light on contemporary issues that are usually treated in sound bites and position papers. The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues (Broadway Books) ?LAINE BERGESON

John Porcellino zen zine-ster
John Porcellino likes to pay attention to little things, like sidewalk cracks and caddis fly larvae; and big things, like the meaning of life. In his poignant King-Cat Comics and Stories, which he?s been self-publishing the old-fashioned way (photocopying, folding, and stapling it himself) since 1989, Porcellino draws and tells exquisitely simple and charming stories of his quiet life and lively mind.
While some King-Cat stories have been included in a commercial collection, Perfect Example (Highwater Books, 2000), Porcellino prefers crafting his own work. ?Making your own zine or drawing your own comic and putting it together yourself in this day and age really is a revolutionary act,? he says in a recent Comics Journal interview.
Over the course of 60 issues, the 31-year-old Porcellino has perfected an ability to convey essentials with perfect simplicity. A panel depicting rain may contain just a few diagonal dashes; he may suggest a landscape with a few simple half circles and straight lines. Entire stories appear with no words at all. King-Cat also moves seamlessly from physical details to philosophy. In what other comic does a description of a day?s work as a mosquito abatement technician turn into a reflection on the question ?What is this world?? www.king-cat.net ?CHRIS DODGE

Fran?ois Ozon French Tease
Combine Alfred Hitchcock?s mastery of composition with Rainer Werner Fassbinder?s campy inventiveness, then add the eerie quality of David Cronenberg and you have French cinema?s current enfant terrible, Fran?ois Ozon?a provocative 35-year-old director who turns out films faster than you can say ?Voil?!??14 short films between 1991 and 1997; one feature film per year since 1998.
He?s fast, yes?but thoughtful, too. ?From movies, I don?t expect answers as much as questions,? Ozon says, and among the questions his films pose is, What kind of movie is this, anyway? He mixes and matches many forms in a single film?tragedy, melodrama, farce, thriller?while keeping his wry and subversive sense of humor intact.
Whether it?s a ?gay, S&M fantasy based on Hansel and Gretel??as one critic described his film, Criminal Lovers?the anti-bourgeois satire Sitcom, or his latest film, Eight Women, a murder mystery starring a veritable who?s who of French actresses, one never knows quite what to expect from Ozon?and he seems to like it that way. www.francois-ozon.com?ANJULA RAZDAN

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