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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).
Tom Ireland (opens in a new tab) served as the editor of El Palacio from 2015 to 2016. He is an author known for his books Mostly Mules, a travel journal with photos by Molly Mehaffy; Birds of Sorrow: Notes from a River Junction in Northern New Mexico; Our Love Is Like A Cake, true-life romance in post-Soviet Poland; The Man Who Gave His Wife Away, an essay collection about relationships; and The Household Muse, a collaboration with Anne Valley-Fox. He was awarded a literary fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Jeffrey E. Smith award in nonfiction from The Missouri Review. Two of his essays were chosen to appear in Best American Travel Writing.
![A group of fourteen men and one woman, some standing and some seated, pose together against a plain background in a stylized, colorful illustration. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Finding-a-Contemporary-Voice_1-400x225.jpg)
BY TOM IRELAND When the American Academy of Poets made April National Poetry Month, they must have had T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land in mind (“April is the cruellest month”). During April we celebrate poetry as practiced not only by career poets but also by the man and woman on the street, in the American vernacular. (more…)
![A stylized, blue-toned portrait of a man with a mustache, beard, and ruffled collar, painted with abstract and textured elements. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Shakespeares-First-Folio_6-400x225.jpg)
BY TOM IRELAND The title of the ongoing exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum—From New York to New Mexico: Masterworks of American Modernism—reminds me of my coming-of-age in postwar New York City and raises the question of what brought so many homegrown immigrants, including artists, from a place of such material abundance to a place of such abundant emptiness. [wonderplugin_slider
![A colorful antique map of the Americas, featuring illustrations of ships, sea creatures, and figures, with labeled regions and oceans in Latin. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Great-Spacke-of-Land-Unknown_1-400x225.jpg)
BY TOM IRELAND When I was nineteen I’d heard rumors of a vast continent west of New York City, but the farthest west I’d ever been was Fort Lee, New Jersey. My college buddies and I planned a motorcycle trip to the West Coast, and when they flaked out on me, I decided to go alone. (more…)
![A mule stands outdoors carrying heavy packs on its sides, with leafless trees and a hilly landscape in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/On-Not-Leaving-Home_2-400x225.jpg)
BY TOM IRELAND It’s been over forty years since I and my wife at the time, newly married, bought four Mexican mules and, riding two and packing two, traveled west from Taos to find a home somewhere in that general direction. [wonderplugin_slider id="120"] (more…)
