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).

Kate Russell

Kate Russell (opens in a new tab) is a photographer. She lives in Santa Fe.

Color photograph of portfolio of fine art prints displayed vertically and open

Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts Celebrates Fifty Years

New Mexico Governor Bruce King and First Lady Alice King established the Governor’s Awards for Excellence in the Arts in 1974 to celebrate the significance of the arts to the state’s culture and economy. The first recipients were well-known icons responsible for creating the visual mythos the world associates with the Land of Enchantment. Today, those honorees are bona fide art royalty—painter Georgia O’Keeffe, potter Maria Martinez, architect John Gaw Meem, and photographer Laura Gilpin.

A rustic dining room with exposed wooden ceiling beams, a metal table with four chairs, wooden cabinets, art on the walls, and concrete flooring. [gen-ai]

The House of Mirth

BY LES DALY Meet James Holmes, “Compulsive Artistic Humorist.” That wouldn’t all be on his business card, of course. But if he had a full-disclosure card, it could legitimately say, at least, “Sculptor, artist, woodworker, cabinet-maker.” Maybe “art on impulse.” Maybe “collector of the curious.” And on the other side, a view into his whimsical mind: a full-sized pie, the kind Mother used to make, except Holmes crafted his in detail from sheet-lead, patterned in the crust, scalloped at the edge, with a servable slice.