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For over a century, El Palacio has been a forum for voices exploring New Mexico’s art, archaeology, history, and landscape. Explore the writers, photographers, historians, and scientists whose perspectives have defined the magazine’s pages—past and present.
Arthur Sze is the current U.S. Poet Laureate. Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of twelve books, including Into the Hush, Sight Lines, and others. Sze’s poems have been translated into fifteen languages, and he is the recipient of the National Book Award among many other honors. He lives in Santa Fe.
Deborah Jackson Taffa is a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a 2024 National Book Award Finalist and was longlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Taffa serves as the director of the MFA in creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Cara Romero is an award-winning contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero’s expansive oeuvre has been informed by formal training in film, digital, fine art, and commercial photography. She maintains a studio in Santa Fe, regularly participates in Native American art fairs, and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019).
Alysia L. Abbott is a professional archaeologist living in Santa Fe.
In an ancient city brimming with monuments to her last 400 years, most of the people who lived and died here between 1610 and the turn of the twentieth century—and some even later—have no monuments. Where once the graves of La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis were marked with wooden crosses or stone tablets, flowers or ivy, most are now covered by parking lots.
![A weathered gravestone lies partially covered by grass, with two black, white, and red measuring rods placed alongside it for scale. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/8-7-400x225.jpg)
Kate Kingsbury met her fate on June 5, 1857, while riding with a wagon train carrying people and goods from Missouri to the old Spanish Capital. The trip was rough, but Kate had made it before. Her health was not good, but she was intrepid even up to her final passing. She could not have foreseen that death was not to be the end of the trail for her.
