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.

Woman with long dark hair and sunglasses wearing a textured rust-colored top and a green stone necklace, standing against a plain light 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).

A bald older man with a mustache, wearing a black polo shirt, looks at the camera against a plain white background.

Alex Traube

Alex Traube (opens in a new tab) has been a photographer since the early 1970s. He holds master’s degrees in photography and design. His photographs and digital images have been exhibited in over 150 solo and group shows in the United States and abroad and are in more than fifty museum collections. He has received a number of grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and an Illinois Art Council Fellowship. The University of New Mexico Press published a book of his photographs, Las Vegas, New Mexico: A Portrait, in 1983, and Rush Creek Editions published While We Were Here: Portraits of New Mexico Families, in 2026.