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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).
Simone Frances is a writer and architectural photographer based in Santa Fe, and coastal Maine. Frances received her BFA in photography in 2004 from the College of Santa Fe. After a long career as an antique photographic printer, Frances took her master’s in photography from the University of New Mexico in 2019, where she was a teacher of photography. Exhibiting locally and nationally, she has received awards and honors, such as the SITE Santa Fe Site Scholar, SOMA Mexico City Fellowship, the Fred M. Calkins Award, the Phyllis Muth Scholarship for Fine Arts, and the John L. Knight Award. Frances served as the Pictorial Fellow at the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections from 2017 to 2019.
By Paul Weideman Santa Fe’s history lives in its buildings— in the places where people lived, worked, played, studied and worshipped during the past several centuries. Many of the buildings are wonderful in themselves; as examples of adobe construction, for instance. And in both the buildings and their people, we realize the importance of historic preservation. One esteemed survivor is the Otero-Bergere House on Grant Avenue.
