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).

Steven J. Yazzie

Steven J. Yazzie (opens in a new tab) is a multidisciplinary artist working across painting, installation, video/film, photography and community collaboration. Yazzie is a member of the Navajo Nation and a veteran of the Gulf War, serving honorably with the United States Marine Corps, 1988-92. He received a BFA at Arizona State University and was named 2014 Outstanding Graduate for the Herberger Institute for Design and Art; Yazzie was a Community Scholar for the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Study of (in)Equality, University of Denver, Colorado, 2019-20; Additionally, Yazzie was a founding member of Postcommodity, an Indigenous arts collective, and the co-founder of the Museum of Walking. Yazzie’s notable exhibitions include the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver Art Museum, Colorado; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Phoenix Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Tucson Museum of Art in Arizona. Yazzie was selected for the 2025 Sharjah Biennial 16, UAE. He lives and works in Denver, Colorado.

A large, jagged rock formation rises from a flat desert landscape under a purple and red star-filled night sky.

Symphonies in the Skies

By RoseMary Diaz Growing up in Santa Clara Pueblo, I listened to my grandmother tell the stories of our Tewa ancestors. From her I learned about how the Old Ones came from the north and built their homes in sandstone cliffs and atop high desert mesas of the Southwest; how they nurtured close relationships with the land and the animals and plants who also call it home; how they learned to read the weather and the seasons, hunt, and plant crops of beans, squash, and corn in a rainbow of sacred colors; how they shaped a rich legacy of language, song, and dance; and how they developed complex cosmocentric ceremonial and religious constructs that continue to define Tewa culture and belief today.