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.

A man with short gray hair and glasses, wearing a collared shirt, looks at the camera against a black background.

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.

A woman with long dark hair wearing a coral shirt sits outdoors, resting her chin on her hand, with greenery and flowers in the background.

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.

A woman with straight brown hair wearing a dark turtleneck and long, beaded earrings poses against a plain white background.

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).

Isabel Miranda

Isabel Miranda is a Bolivian-American artist and photographer who grew up in seven different countries. She lives in Albuquerque.

Art-filled living room with paintings, shelves of figurines, framed photos, potted plants, and a drum arranged against a white wall.

Pathway and Relationship

Green, yellow, and red outline three edges of the canvas. The flat expanse of turquoise sky holds a small, distant sun. Red, orange, then yellow—circle inside of circle inside of circle—black thin spokes reaching from its circumference. Above the clouds, above the mountain, is a Divine presence, the largest and most colorful figure. Below, what is life-giving and life-sustaining—corn growing. Kokopellis play their flutes, and a howler monkey, creative protector and guide, smiles from the lower right-hand corner as if more knowing than the human, who stands opposite in the lower left corner.