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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).
Dr. David Kilby (opens in a new tab) is a professor at Texas State University whose research focuses on North American Paleoindians, hunter-gathere archaeology, Southwest prehistory, the organization of lithic technology, geoarchaeology, cultural resource management, and applied archaeology. David has a BA from Appalachian State University, an MA from Eastern New Mexico University, and a PhD from the University of New Mexico.
A young woman hurried across the flat, trailing footprints. At times she slipped. At times she stretched to cross a puddle. She carried a child and possibly a container for water, or food, or perhaps a bag of firewood or stones for making tools. The ditch grass, a thin herb growing in the wet lakeshore mud, had gone to seed. As the woman walked, she squished the tiny seeds into the mud.
