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).

Esther Belin

Esther Belin (opens in a new tab) is a writer and multi-media artist. In 2000, her first book of poetry, From the Belly of My Beauty, won the American Book Award. She holds degrees from Antioch University, IAIA, and UC Berkeley. She is a Navajo Nation citizen and lives in southwest Colorado with her four daughters and husband.

Black-and-white photo of a large, jagged rock formation rising from a flat, sparsely vegetated plain under a partly cloudy sky. [gen-ai]

The Petition(-ing, er) of Peace(-ful)(mak -ing, -er)

BY ESTHER G. BELIN This poem accompanies Hampton Sides's story, "Straight Back to Our Own Country." How can the spine of a synapse misalign, or be removed? And what of the gorge-forming groans Dinétah has spoken? And who is tending the fields that hold the tádídíín of peace? And where is the sacred horizon from the morning star of strength? If I were to be the last testimony of memory, I would tether to the prayers and songs still lingering in the land.