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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 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 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 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).
Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz (opens in a new tab) is a 2019 Kennedy Center Citizen Artist who moves between the realms of oral history, art, ritual, and civic engagement to produce meaningful, forward-facing cultural projects. Mi’Jan was a 2023–2024 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Huntington Library, where her research with Octavia E. Butler’s archives continues to unfold. Previously, Mi’Jan curated and hosted Unfinished Network’s 2022 inaugural salon on the theme of multiracial democracy with CNN’s Van Jones and MSNBC’s Maria Teresa Kumar; designed and led the Gloria Steinem Initiative’s public policy digital storytelling pilot; and held various faculty and scholar appointments at Columbia University, New York University, and the Banff Centre in Canada. One of Mi’Jan’s greatest joys is connecting with audiences through her visionary, story-rich talks at a range of institutions, from Carnegie Hall to the Institute of American Indian Arts to SXSW. Making history contemporary, personal, and futures-dependent, she surfaces the stories that need to be heard.
When we arrive at the table, we witness an assortment of heads intermittently lowered in praise-filled bites, not prayer, trying to draw the meal out as long as possible. No food grows cold or is left over, which is the ultimate compliment to the chef. What is New Mexican-based art, if not our foods? The arts all carry the opportunity to permeate our minds and hearts, traveling different routes to our scatterplot of available senses.
