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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).
Ungelbah Dávila (Diné) is an award-winning writer and photographer from New Mexico. She spent her first twelve years in rural New Mexico on her father’s cattle ranch in Mangas, and mother’s property along the Gila Wilderness and San Francisco River in Reserve, New Mexico. Ungelbah received her BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts and launched La Loca Magazine during her time there. She began self publishing La Loca with national distribution from 2013-2015 while working as a copyeditor and journalist at the Valencia County News Bulletin (2011-2012) where she was awarded the National Newspaper Association Award: Best Serious Column & Best Breaking News Story (2013).
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I follow Jock Soto across the TV screen, measuring his movements in lengths. The length of an arm, reaching out, every finger engaged with emotion. The length of his neck as his head looks skyward, his black hair blending into the stage, his brown throat exposed, veins pulsing. The length of his legs fluttering through the air in a moment of ethereal flight.
When we arrive at the table, we witness an assortment of heads intermittently lowered in praise-filled bites, not prayer, trying to draw the meal out as long as possible. No food grows cold or is left over, which is the ultimate compliment to the chef. What is New Mexican-based art, if not our foods? The arts all carry the opportunity to permeate our minds and hearts, traveling different routes to our scatterplot of available senses.
