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).

Kathryn M Davis

Kathryn M Davis is an art historian, writer, and curator who specializes in modern and contemporary visual arts and critical theory. Davis hosts a weekly radio show, ArtBeat, on KVSF 101.5 FM. She has taught art history at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design, and at the University of Tennessee, as well as at nonprofit arts organizations.

A large triangular table set with ornate place settings and decorated plates, displayed in a spacious, dimly lit room with dark walls and spotlights. [gen-ai]

Judy Chicago

Few women in recent history have midwifed their own second birth as has Judy Chicago, re-inventing herself according to her will and the kind of wisdom that comes with a keen mind, an unflagging diligence, and an indomitable determination to follow her own path. As a female art student at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the 1960s, Chicago asserted her individuality and independence, often flying blind while she explored what it meant to be a “woman artist” in an era that found the very idea as likely as watering houseplants on the moon.