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).

David Grant Noble

David Grant Noble is a writer and photographer whose books include In the Places of the Spirits, Ancient Ruins of the Southwest: An Archaeological Guide, and In Search of Chaco: New Approaches to an Archaeological Enigma.

Aerial view of an archaeological site on a hillside with excavated areas and surrounding desert landscape, mountains in the background. [gen-ai]

Living on the Edge

By Jason S. Shapiro In 1915, the world was consumed by a devastating world war—but it was also the year that a tall, thin, Danish archaeologist made his second trip to New Mexico in order to study the archaeology of the Galisteo Basin in the northern Rio Grande Valley. Nels Nelson, working for the American Museum of Natural History in New York, made numerous test excavations at several large pueblos, including a site just outside the city of Santa Fe: an archaeological gem called Arroyo Hondo.