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).

Alanna Romero

Alanna Romero is a New Mexican artist. For the past twenty-seven years she has been nurturing a passion in photography. Mostly self-taught, she has travelled through the United States and Europe capturing imagery focused on nature, culture, spirituality, and history. Her work has been displayed in the New Mexico Museum of Art and several New Mexico shops and galleries.

Gregory Mac Gregor, Green River crossing site, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah, 2008. Courtesy the artist.

Pasó por Aquí

By Dr. Alicia M. Romero "For through the lack of expert help we made many detours, wasted time from so many days spent in a very small area, and suffered hunger and thirst. … But God doubtless disposed that we obtained no guide, either as merciful chastisement for our faults or so that we could acquire some knowledge of the peoples living hereabouts,” wrote Fray Francisco Atanasio Domínguez on November 7, 1776, just as he, Fray Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, and their exploration party successfully traversed what is now known as the Crossing of the Fathers at Lake Powell, between Utah and Arizona.