The FUSION of El Palacio

NEWS | TUESDAY, JULY 21 | BY FUSION STAFF WRITER, RUDOLFO CARRILLO

El Palacio is the official magazine of the Museum of New Mexico. The publication has a storied history and was first published with an early twentieth century bent toward archaeology back in the before times, in the year 1913.

As a matter of creative custom (after all this is the publication’s second year wherein FUSION hosts the legendary magazine’s summer publication), FUSION hosts a reading and discussion focused on El Palacio’s current issue, Volume 131, Number 2, on Sunday, August 2, 2026, from 2:00 PM until 3:30 PM.

This summer’s iteration of El Palacio features work by some of our state’s most insightful, intense, challenging, and uplifting scholars, researchers, and writers. Those nuevomexicano luminaries include Estevan Rael-Gálvez, Lazarus Letcher, Myrriah Gómez, and Oliver Horn. They’ll be an important part of the event at FUSION, well worth attending for anyone interested in our state, where it was, where it is, and where it will be.

To find out more about the legacy, current relevance, and future of this amazing publication, including what the reading at FUSION offers our community, we took time to have an in-depth conversation with Emily Withnall, El Palacio’s editor in chief and the creative force behind the magazine’s coolly continued engagement with New Mexico culture and history.

Rudolfo Carrillo: Could you please tell me all about the latest issue of El Palacio?

Emily Withnall: The summer issue came out at the beginning of June and is packed full of New Mexico history. We have an article from the former New Mexico state historian Estevan Rael-Gálvez. He wrote an incredible article about reckoning with 1776. As most people probably know, this is the 250th anniversary of the USA, and lots of people are talking about it, writing about it. Esteban writes about New Mexico [in 1776], where our state was at that time, because we certainly were not a part of the country yet. He talks about that difference. He talks about indigenous enslavement, lots of things that people may not be fully aware of. That is an excellent article. There’s an essay in celebration of the centennial of Route 66; an essay by Lazarus Letcher about Blackness and queerness on Route 66 in Albuquerque. It’s a personal essay, but also weaves in the history of travelers along Route 66 who were seeking freedom, seeking safety. What else do we have? We have an article about some Diné elders on the Navajo Nation who fought a power plant and won. They stopped it from being built; it’s an inspiring story with lots of beautiful photographs.

Tell me more, please!

The articles in the issue include one by Myrriah Gómez, who teaches at UNM. She wrote about the exhibition at the National Hispanic Cultural Center about the legacy of the Downwinders and the Trinity Site, and specifically artists who were dealing with Trinity Site and the cancer that families have been dealing with in the Tularosa Basin as a result of Los Alamos testing the first atomic bomb there. That’s a very powerful article. There’s also an article that’s near and dear to my heart by Oliver Horn, who is the manager of Fort Stanton and Lincoln Historic Sites. He wrote about the connection between the loss of communal land grants in northern New Mexico and the catastrophic wildfires that we’ve been seeing [in New Mexico] in the past few years. He links those catastrophic environmental disasters to the privatization of what was once communal land in northern New Mexico. It’s a really powerful article that gets into the history of how land was privatized in the state over time. So these are all very, very much, pertinent to what’s going on in New Mexico culture right now.

What’s the readership of El Palacio like? Is it a public-facing publication as opposed to an academic journal? Who reads El Palacio and why is it important to our community and culture?

Those are excellent questions! A lot of New Mexicans read El Palacio, but surprisingly, maybe to some people, we have people from around the country that read it because they are interested in New Mexican culture, writing, and art. The library at Brown University carries it. We even have people in other countries who subscribe. It is a beautiful print magazine. It was originally much more academic in focus. It was mostly focused on archaeologists, archaeology at the time [was a very popular subject in America and New Mexico], and now it covers the art, history, and culture of New Mexico.

How has your vision contributed to the evolution of El Palacio?

My goal has been to move a little bit away from that academic focus because I want it to be accessible. I want anyone to be able to pick it up and learn something about the deeper history of New Mexico that might not be known to them or their community. I want El Palacio to be inviting to potential readers.

What can readers, what can the audience expect at this year’s intersection of FUSION and El Palacio?

This summer issue reading will be more of a panel, a conversation that I will facilitate between the four readers who will be present. The people who are coming, who wrote the articles will be talking a lot about myth-making; there’s a lot of history that we think we know that is maybe not as true as we think it is. We’ll be talking about that. We’ll be talking about archives; whose voices are reflected in historic archives and whose aren’t; how we make sense of the past when we don’t have access to certain information. We’ll be talking about big themes. Then, of course, each of the authors will be doing a deeper dive into the details of their specific articles. Finally, we’re also going to open the discussion to questions from the audience. 

What I want to ask now is about the audience and about getting people interested in vital cultural events like this in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and the state.  A lot of times, at literary or art events, you see people from a certain, very specific social class, not a socioeconomic class per se…but mostly a certain class of people go to readings and art openings; I say that self-consciously because I’m one of those people. How do we open up that milieu? How do we get more people from the general community interested in events like this?

Part of my strategy [as editor in chief of El Palacio] has been to be very deliberate about who my writers are, because if my writers are a part of the general community, then they will bring their friends and family and community members. That was certainly true of the Platica event that we held in Las Vegas, [New Mexico]. Las Vegas is my hometown. Myrriah Gómez went to school there at Highlands, as did I. We actually were in a class together back in the day. So I think that having those personal and cultural roots in the communities, so that people know that you’re really speaking from the place you’re from, that matters a lot. I have seen panelists at previous events, they bring their friends and family members. I can’t speak for everyone, I don’t know everyone in the crowd, but it seems to be a fairly diverse crowd of folks who are coming out to learn the deeper histories of things that might not be found in other places; that's something that El Palacio really specializes in, really digging into the lesser known stories of this state.

Do you have an El Palacio pitch?

I would say come to FUSION for our event; it’s free, check it out! El Palacio has been around for a long time. What I often encounter from different types of people is that whenever a person may have encountered El Palacio in the past, they have certain assumptions about what it is. But, like any publication that changes over time, every editor brings their own lens and their own approach to an evolving publication. So be open to surprise, be open to learning a lot. I certainly learn a lot every day as an editor when I’m working on these pieces about the history of a New Mexico that I certainly wasn’t taught about in school. It’s fun. We bring refreshments. Come have some cookies and see what you might learn!

El Palacio Summer Issue Reading and Q&A
Sunday, August 2, 2026
2:00 PM  3:30 PM
FUSION | 708
708 1st Street Northwest
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Free RSVP Here.