El Palacio Magazine

09/04/2026

SUNDAY, APRIL 26 · 1:00 PM · NEW MEXICO MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY AND SCIENCE

Join us at the newly reopened Natural History Museum for a jam-packed hour of poetry.
We will celebrate the winners of the Third Annual New Mexico Ekphrastic Poetry Contest,
and we’ll be joined for readings by contest judges and poets Michelle LaFlamme-Childs, Erin Adair-Hodges, and current New Mexico poet laureate, Manuel González, along with local faves Hakim Bellamy, Lauren Camp, and Kathryne Lim. Poetry and dinosaurs? Don’t miss out!

The event is co-hosted by El Palacio magazine and the Museum of New Mexico Press.

07/04/2026

El Palacio published a profile of Albuquerque filmmaker StormMiguel Florez in our Spring 2024 issue. Florez is hosting a screening of his documentary, “The Whistle,” this coming Sunday at 2 pm at the Hiland Theater and El Palacio will be there as a community partner! The film documents young le****ns in Albuquerque in the 1970s and 1980s and reveals the ways friendship and community means everything.

If you have not yet seen “The Whistle” this is the perfect opportunity (and for anyone who can’t get to Albuquerque on Sunday it’s available to watch on NM PBS). Get your tickets at bit.ly/TheWhistleABQ. Check out the article by Lazarus Letcher at www.elpalacio.org.

01/04/2026

Kicking off National Poetry Month by celebrating the U.S. Poet Laureate—Santa Fe’s own Arthur Sze! The spring issue of El Palacio features a profile of Sze along with six of his poems. As writer Kathryne Lim shares in her profile of him, Sze’s poems “allow for a collapsing of space and time.” To read the profile along with all the other poetry in this issue, subscribe at www.elpalacio.org/subscribe.

12/03/2026

On February 22, 2026, 120 people in Las Vegas, NM, attended the El Palacio Plática at the New Mexico Highlands University Donnelly Library. The plática featured writer Myrriah Gómez and photographer and activist Adelita M. Medina. Medina was an activist during El Movimiento in Las Vegas in the 1970s and she shared her memories of the women who shaped the movement and created a school and farm in Montezuma. Many people in the audience shared their memories of that time too, and young people in the Brown Berets showed up, too. To watch the video recording of the plática, see the link in the comments--and please subscribe to the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs YouTube channel so you don't miss future recordings. And to read the article in the winter issue of El Palacio, visit www.elpalacio.org.

02/03/2026

The spring issue is on the way and it's brimming with poetry! Santa Fe poet, Kathryne Lim, provides an insightful profile of longtime Santa Fe resident and new U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze, along with may of his poems. Albuquerque Poet Laureate Emerita Hakim Bellamy profiles fellow slam poet and new New Mexico Poet Laureate, Manuel González, along with one of his celebrated poems. And Michelle Laflamme-Childs of New Mexico Arts and New Mexico Poet Laureate Emerita, Lauren Camp, share their process for collecting and collaging community poems across the state for their Epic Poem Project, and share six community poems from Gallup, Raton, Mountainair, Lincoln County, Artesia, and Deming. All in all, it's is a celebration of poetry and deep love for New Mexico.

In addition to all the poetry, there are also two features--a profile of the curator and art writer Lucy Lippard and an article about the ways Indigenous artists are blending art and environmental activism in their work.

Interested? There's not better time than now to subscribe! Subscribe at elpalacio.org/subscribe.

26/02/2026

As Black History Month draws to a close, El Palacio is sharing six articles about Black history in New Mexico published in recent years. Much has been said and written about New Mexico’s “tri-cultural” myth. This includes the myth’s erasure of the history and contemporary realities of Black New Mexicans, people with mixed Mexican and/or Indigenous and Black identities—in addition to the flattening of distinct Pueblos and tribes into one “Native culture,” the erasure of New Mexicans with Chinese and Japanese heritage, Mexican Americans, and many other populations.

The six articles featured here cover a range of Black history in New Mexico, from woman Buffalo Soldier to the all-Black settlement Blackdom, to the Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer’s love of Taos, to Black cowboys Civil War pensioners who settled in New Mexico. The articles can all be read online at elpalacio.org.

25/02/2026

Do you know that in both Santa Fe and Albuquerque you can learn traditional Nuevo Mexicano arts from renowned Nuevo Mexicano artists like Jean Anaya Moya, Vicente Telles, Arthur López, Cleo Romero, and many others? Both and offer programming to kids and families that help continue the legacy of Nuevo Mexicano arts like bultos and retablos, colcha embroidery, tinwork, and straw appliqué.

Join Elena Baca of NHCC and Jana Gottshalk of NMHAM as they talk with podcast host and editor of El Palacio, Emily Withnall, about the importance of the arts, sustaining cultural heritage, and the need for creative expression.

Listen at podcast.nmculture.org or on any podcast app. And we’re now on YouTube, where you can also view recordings of El Palacio events! Find us there at YouTube.com/.

20/02/2026

El Palacio hosted a reading panel for the Winter 2025 issue last month in Albuquerque. Here is the recording for those of you who missed it! The panel reading featured writers Laura Paskus, Myrriah Gómez, Rica Maestas, and Santana Shorty. The readings included articles about community-led archaeology at Acoma Pueblo, the women of the Chicano Movement in Las Vegas, NM, in the 1970s, the complex and challenging histories contained by the Palace of the Governors, and a poem to remind us all of the beauty around us if we choose to pay attention. Links to all of these are in the comments and print copies are also still available.

And in case you missed it, we are on YouTube! Please follow the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs channel there so you don't miss these recordings. We also host the podcast Encounter Culture there (in addition to other podcast apps), in case YouTube is your preferred listening platform.

And don't miss the next reading coming this Sunday, Feb. 22, in Las Vegas, NM at Donnelly Library. Myrriah Gómez will be in conversation with Adelita M. Medina, an artist and activist who was part of El Movimiento. Medina will be sharing her black and white photos from that time and audience members will be invited to share their memories, too.

Sunday, January 11, 2026, at 2 pmFUSION | 708, located at 708 1st St. NW, Albuquerque, NM 87102A reading panel and conversation with four contributors to El...

12/02/2026

It turns out that buying one accordion just might spark a passion that leads you to owning 200! This was certainly the case for Tony Tomei—and recently he’s passed his entire collection on to his former apprentice, Antonio Maestas. The pair took part in the Folk Arts Apprenticeship program in 2024, where Tony taught Antonio how to repair every kind of accordion that exists.

Listen to their conversation with podcast host and El Palacio editor, Emily Withnall, to hear about how they developed a passion for accordion music and the art of accordion repair. And as a bonus, they each play the accordion music that reflects each of their cultural backgrounds.

Listen at podcast.nmculture.org or subscribe on your favorite podcast app!

28/01/2026

A photographer, like any artist working in any medium, makes deliberate choices about what to leave in the frame and what to exclude. What should we make of a photographer from a century ago who was using his camera to promote tourism in Gallup but also taking photographs of the tourists gawking at Indigenous dancers at the Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial? William Thomas Mullarky can’t answer our questions about his unexpected framing of life in Gallup in the 1930s but his photos are now housed at the ‘s and they provide fascinating fodder for researchers piecing together the past. On this new episode of Encounter Culture, David Correia talks about his quest to find these previously inaccessible photos and what makes them so unusual. Listen on any podcast app! And check out Correia’s recent article about the Gallup Coal Wars of 1933-35 in the fall 2025 issue of El Palacio. Mullarky’s photos are featured throughout. (elpalacio.org)

24/01/2026

New Mexico State Poet Laureate, Manuel González, stood in the House of Representatives of the State of New Mexico’s opening session on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, carrying the stories of our communities—past, present, and future—reciting his poem, “This Land Remembers.”

Poetry here is not symbolic.
It is presence, memory, and possibility.
Art is not a luxury.
It is a lifeline.

Listen here: https://pulse.ly/ksgilifes6

González is the third state poet laureate appointment by New Mexico Arts and the New Mexico State Library, divisions of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, a program created during the 2019 legislature.

Arthur Sze, the United States Poet Laureate, also brought the quiet power of language into the opening session of the New Mexico State Senate on January 20th, reminding us that policy shapes lives, and words shape how we care for one another.

Art belongs wherever decisions are made.
So do poets.

Listen to Arthur recite is two poems here: https://pulse.ly/qyvtokxv4l

23/01/2026

Join Adelita M. Medina and Myrriah Gómez at New Mexico Highlands University’s Donnelly Library to talk about Chicana activism in Las Vegas during the 1960s and ‘70s. Medina’s black and white photographs, taken in Las Vegas during El Movimiento Chicano, will be projected throughout the conversation. The plática will cover about how women and children were directly involved in the activism during El Movimiento and there will be opportunities for community members to join the conversation and add their own stories and memories from this moment in Las Vegas’s past.

Copies of the Winter 2025 issue of El Palacio, featuring Myrriah Gomez’s article about Adelita M. Medina’s photos and Chicana activism in Las Vegas, will be available for sale.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Adelita Michelle Medina is a multi-media artist, social justice and peace activist, and a freelance writer. She holds an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. in Art and English from New Mexico Highlands University. Medina grew up in Ranchitos, New Mexico, and moved to New York City in 1975 where she studied and worked for several non-profit and civil rights organizations for twenty-five years. She returned to New Mexico in 2004 and now resides in Albuquerque. A dozen of her black and white photographs and several paintings and collages were part of the recent “Voces del Pueblo: Artists of the Levantamiento Chicano in New Mexico” exhibition at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

Myrriah Gómez is an associate professor in the Honors College at the University of New Mexico and the author of “Nuclear Nuevo México: Colonialism and the Effects of the Nuclear Industrial Complex on Nuevomexicanos.”