Contributors

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

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

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

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).

Cullen Arlington Curtiss

Cullen Arlington Curtiss (opens in a new tab) is a freelance writer with New England roots currently living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. When she’s not writing, she’s outside with her family and friends.

A pair of large leather mittens with beaded trim and decorative designs, featuring tan and yellow coloring and a circular hole on one mitten. [gen-ai]

Material World

Of the hundreds of peoples that lived and flourished in native North America, few have been so consistently misrepresented as the Apacheans of Arizona and New Mexico,” anthropologist and Apache culturist Keith H. Basso wrote in his essay “Western Apache” in the Handbook of North American Indians published in 1978. “Glorified by novelists, sensationalized by historians, and distorted beyond credulity by commercial film makers, the popular image of ‘the Apache’…is almost entirely a product of irresponsible caricature and exaggeration.” This knowledge gap challenged Museum of Indian Arts and Culture Education Director Joyce Begay-Foss (Diné) to curate Lifeways of the Southern Athabaskans, opening at MIAC December 10.