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).

Woman with long brown hair, wearing glasses, a sleeveless black top, and colorful earrings, smiles against a dark gray background.

Elizabeth Perrill

Elizabeth Perrill (opens in a new tab) is the Smart-Tillman Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and was the guest curator of iNgqikithi yokuPhica/Weaving Meanings: Telephone Wire Art from South Africa at the Museum of International Folk Art. This article was written with extensive editorial input from Muziwandile Gigaba, the community curator and lead Indigenous knowledge expert for iNgqikithi yokuPhica, a lecturer at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa.

Headshot photo credit: Phuc (James) Diep.

multi-colored round telephone wire weaving

Weaving New Meanings

Without traffic, it only takes thirty minutes to reach KwaMashu and Siyanda. Past Durban’s inner suburbs, stadiums, mansions, and malls, I reach the few highway entrances that connect these historically Black neighborhoods—home to over 175,000 people, over ninety percent of whom are isiZulu-speaking—to the rest of this 3.25-million-person harbor city. As I enter KwaMashu, the road narrows and the terrain becomes less grid-like.