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).

Shirley A. Leckie

Shirley A. Leckie is a professor emerita of history at the University of Central Florida specializing in Women in American History and the American West. She is a renowned author known for titles such as The Colonel’s Lady on the Western Frontier: The Correspondance of Alice Kirk Grierson, Covered Wagon Women, Volume 7: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1854-1860, and Their Own Frontier: Women Intellectuals Re-Visioning the American West.

Four people stand among ancient stone ruins at an archaeological excavation site, with open landscape visible in the background. [gen-ai]

They Also Dug

BY CATHERINE S. FOWLER AND NANCY J. PAREZO If asked, could you name five or more archaeologists famous for digging in the American Southwest in the early to mid-twentieth century? Edgar Lee Hewett, Alfred Kidder, Neal Judd, Earl Morris, Frank Roberts, Emil Haury, and Paul Martin might come to mind. A few archaeology buffs might name Florence Ellis, Marie Wormington, and some Santa Feans might recall Marjorie Lambert or Bertha Dutton, but listing five women—or any women automatically—would be less likely.