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 hair and earrings standing outdoors, shown in profile, looking into the distance. The image is in black and white.

Santana Shorty

Santana Shorty is a writer and poet from northern New Mexico. She received her BA from Stanford University and MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her writing has been published in New Mexico Magazine, El Palacio magazine, and in the anthology Water Bodies: Love Letters to the Most Abundant Substance on Earth from Torrey House Press. Currently, she is working on her first novel. She is a member of the Navajo Nation and lives in Santa Fe.

Bright sunlight shines through tree branches against a clear blue sky, with visible lens flare and sun rays spreading outward.

Sun Series

Sunrise, accept this offering. Sunrise.  –From Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko Part I: Sunsetting The end is full of waiting.  Of willful meandering.  The kind that compels you to put candles of too many varieties into your cart, despite your fear of fire.  There is moxie in doing something you don’t want to.  In finding feral.  In seeking an unachievable solace.  At the windowsill, sitting at the battered and water-stained pane, you will notice your breath is too shallow to properly fog your view.

color landscape of rain in the foreground and light behind

She, The Mountain

At a sleepover when I was seven, my friend said the mountain was a volcano that would erupt at any moment, cracking the dam and flooding Abiquiú. I stayed up most of that night panicking over my impending death. I prayed we would float down the valley like worn winter leaves on water. For years I watched the mountain, leery of her fragile flattop and percolating lava within.