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).

Simón Romero

Simón Romero (opens in a new tab) was born in Albuquerque and raised in Northern New Mexico. He graduated with honors from Harvard College before going into journalism. For The New York Times, he has served as Andean Bureau Chief, based in Caracas, and Brazil Bureau Chief, based in Rio de Janeiro. He is currently an international correspondent for The New York Times based in Mexico City.

Three small painted wooden plaques hang from a shelf, featuring two illustrated faces and one palmistry hand design, with various blurred objects in the background.

Dancing with the Masters

By Simón RomeroPhotographs by Adria Malcom The sun was setting over Santa Fe’s Canyon Road. An opening at Ernesto Mayans Gallery had attracted an assemblage of artists and collectors who were sipping wine from plastic cups and energetically discussing art and politics as cigarette smoke wafted overhead. The year was 1981. “Not again,” I remember mumbling to my ten-year-old self. My mom, Janet Stein Romero, a Brooklyn-born artist who followed her star to New Mexico in the 1960s, had been dragging me to gallery openings for as long as I could remember.