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).

Dr. Nicole Panter Dailey

Dr. Nicole Panter Dailey is a psychologist who splits her time between Los Angeles, Palm Springs, and Santa Fe. Panter Dailey also teaches screenwriting at California Institute of the Arts. She grew up in Palm Springs in the shadow of Mt. San Jacinto.

Surreal landscape with a dark reclining figure, a floating yellow shape with spiral ends, and a cluster of white stars against a blue and purple sky. [gen-ai]

From Ineffable to Incandescent

BY NICOLE PANTER DAILEY Trauma forms people. It frames their actions and reactions. It determines what a person believes and how they move through the world. That the artist Agnes Pelton grew from a frail, sickly, quiet child into a frail, sickly, deeply introspective young woman prone to depression becomes less of a surprise when her personal and family history is explored—and the complexity of her seminal paintings can be appreciated all the more with a clear knowledge of this history.