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).

Deborah Jackson Taffa

Deborah Jackson Taffa (opens in a new tab) is an Indigenous American writer and the author of the memoir Whiskey Tender, which was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was longlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. A citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa and serves as Director of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Taffa has received numerous awards and fellowships from organizations such as the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN America, MacDowell, Hedgebrook, and others.

color photo of two girls on tricycles in matching yellow outfits in the mid 70s

Almost Yuman (1972)

Remembering the Animas River helps me forget, at least for a moment, the challenges, fears, and feelings of inadequacy I experienced in my childhood. Memoria praeteritorum bonorum. My own set of rose-colored glasses. A trick of the mind that helps me highlight the peaceful days, the quiet ones that punctuated the violence, pressures, and confusion of being a Native girl in a northwestern New Mexico town where cowboys still hated Indians, and three White teenagers murdered three Native men just before my family and I moved there for my father’s new job.