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).

Marty Two Bulls Sr.

Marty Two Bulls Sr. (opens in a new tab) is a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, originally from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He was born in Rapid City, S.D., attended college Colorado Institute of Art in Denver, CO., working in Vermillion, Rapid City, and Sioux Falls, S.D. Marty attained his BFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts and currently lives and works in Santa Fe. He works as a senior freelance artist, college art professor and graphic designer. Marty enjoys teaching, painting, sculpting and designing jewelry.

illustration of ancient times in full color - three guards on the roof, a hunter with a catch speaks with a female figure weaving at her loom

Feet, sandals,and the power of political agency in the ancient southwest

Illustrations by Marty Two Bulls Sr. Eight hundred years ago, something profoundly interesting happened in the American Southwest. Over the course of about one hundred years, the Puebloan world consciously transformed itself from a stratified hierarchical society to a system with no apparent markers of classor status. In our current state of political and climate chaos and anxiety, the experiences of Ancestral Puebloan people teach us that deep societal change is possible.