New Mexico is in the Midst of an Under-the-Radar Indie Book Publishing Renaissance
Despite economic flux, new independent book publishers are blooming—and veteran presses are thriving—across New Mexico.
December 12, 2024
Books + Literary
Political Will Meets the Rio Grande’s Natural Power in Zoe Leonard’s Dual Project Al río / To the River
Capturing scenes of quotidian life and military infrastructure, Zoe Leonard's photo book and Chinati show underscore a borderlands reality: an unstoppable river runs through it.
November 21, 2024
In Woven from the Center, Native Baskets Bear Capitalist Marks—but Cradle Sovereign Values
Surface-level market forces are no match for ancestral traditions in veteran ethnologist Diane Dittemore’s new basketry book Woven from the Center.
August 16, 2024
Journey to the Origin of Images: New Book on Aby Warburg’s 1890s Trek to the Southwest Gives New Insights
A new book from Hatje Cantz, The Snake and the Lightning: Aby Warburg's American Journey, enlivens the German art historian's trek to the Southwest in 1895-96.
June 14, 2024
Oracle Bones: High Desert Divination with Terry Tempest Williams and Gaylord Schanilec
In Oracle Bones from Red Butte Press, a writer and an artist wander the Utah wilderness to discern the future. Then it comes true.
May 15, 2024
Diné Writer Brendan Basham Transmutes Words into Worlds
Diné artist, writer, and educator Brendan Basham approaches writing as he does life: as a process of transformation.
April 16, 2024
Books + LiteraryInside Southwest Contemporary
Our Favorite Reads (and One Podcast) of 2023
Southwest Contemporary’s staff—Roman Aragón, Natalie Hegert, Steve Jansen, and Lauren Tresp—pick their favorite reading materials of 2023.
January 04, 2024
Jenn Shapland, Author of New Book Thin Skin, on Writing (and Not Writing, Sometimes)
Santa Fe-based Jenn Shapland, author of multi-award-winning My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, chats about the writing life and her new collection of essays, Thin Skin.
October 25, 2023
Torrey House Press, the “Intermountain West’s Only Nonprofit Environmental Publisher,” Reworks Western Identity
Torrey House Press, an Intermountain West nonprofit environmental book publisher founded in 2010, renews its commitment to Western voices with a new focus on diverse perspectives.
September 21, 2023
SponsoredBooks + LiteraryNew Mexico
Santa Fe’s Radius Books Announces Artist Weekend 2023
Join art book publisher Radius Books for Artist Weekend 2023, a free community celebration with artists, writers, and collaborators in New Mexico.
August 01, 2023
Tommy Archuleta, a Poet and Mental Health Therapist for the New Mexico Corrections Department, Talks Grief and the Ineffable
Tommy Archuleta’s debut poetry book Susto delves into the science and folklore of curanderismo to take readers on a magical and frightening journey through grief.
April 18, 2023
Books + LiteraryArizonaFeatureVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
All Things Visible: Author Lydia Millet on the Sonoran Desert, Strange Morphologies, and Small Acts of Courage
Tucson-based author Lydia Millet reflects on themes of climate change, place, and privilege in her new book Dinosaurs.
March 03, 2023
These Are a Few of Our Favorite Things to Read in 2022
Southwest Contemporary's staff, Natalie Hegert, Steve Jansen, Angie Rizzo, and Lauren Tresp, pick their favorite reads—and one podcast—of 2022.
December 28, 2022
InterviewBooks + LiteraryNew MexicoVol. 6 Rooted: Poetics of Place
Marvelous Green Encounters: The Poetry and Anthropology of Nathaniel Tarn
Based in Santa Fe since the early 1980s, Nathaniel Tarn has spent his career chasing an international literature. A new autobiography, Atlantis, an Autoanthropology, explores the author’s broad career.
August 26, 2022
Raquel Gutiérrez Explores Queer Latinx Identity in Brown Neon
Tucson author Raquel Gutiérrez explores queer identity, creative communities, and life in the Southwest borderlands in her debut essay collection Brown Neon.
July 05, 2022
The Hiroshima Library: A Memorial Next to Refrigerators
The Hiroshima Library is a library (kind of), art installation (we think), reading room, and place for contemplation created by Brandon Shimoda at Counterpath in Denver.
June 21, 2022
“Being Born is Just Plagiarizing Your Parents”: An Interview with Good Actors Author Sommer Browning
Denver poet, librarian, gallerist, and comedian Sommer Browning talks about her new book Good Actors and how it relates to other art forms and interests.
May 25, 2022
Miraflores: San Antonio’s Mexican Garden of Memory by Anne Elise Urrutia
Drawing on public and private archives and fifty years of personal documentation, Anne Elise Urrutia’s book Miraflores brings to life her great-grandfather’s San Antonio garden in unmatched detail.
May 19, 2022
Aerial Concave Without Cloud by Poet and Artist Sueyeun Juliette Lee
Sueyeun Juliette Lee’s Aerial Concave Without Cloud is an extended meditation on how thinking through and with light can help to illuminate profound personal grief.
May 11, 2022
Impractical Spaces: 5 Alternative Art Venues in Houston
A book series diving into historical and current alternative art establishments in major stateside cities visits Texas in Impractical Spaces: Houston. Here are five current H-Town favorites from the book.
April 20, 2022
Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes by Poet Nicky Beer
Denver-based poet Nicky Beer’s Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes is a clever, probing look into the collective desires and fears underlying our love of illusion.
March 29, 2022
Breadth of Bodies: Dancers with Disabilities Speak Out
A new book, Breadth of Bodies: Discussing Disability in Dance, spotlights the voices, experiences, and art of dancers with disabilities.
March 28, 2022
Book Review: A Treatise on Stars by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge's A Treatise on Stars, the latest book by the New Mexico-based poet, makes a case for communication with star beings.
November 16, 2021
Book Review: American Geography by Santa Fe’s Radius Books
American Geography: Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present (Radius Books) connects the exploitation of landscape and people to the formation of so-called American identity.
July 06, 2021
Making History: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
The new book Making History: IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts shows how IAIA is redefining boundaries in Native art scholarship.
January 27, 2021
Getting to Center: A Worthy Offering
Writer and dancer Marlee Grace explores the practice of returning (again and again) to center in her new book.
November 02, 2020
Early Churches of Mexico: An Architect’s View
Santa Fe preservation architect Beverley Spears’s Early Churches of Mexico: An Architect’s View details her decade-plus study of sixteenth-century churches and conventos in Mexico.
March 26, 2020
In A Modern Rendering – The Color Woodcuts of Gustave Baumann
Born in Germany in 1881, Baumann’s parents moved to Chicago when he was ten, and the budding artist began attending the School of the Art Institute in his teens, at one of its most fecund and influential periods. Baumann wasn’t the first of his Chicago peers to discover New Mexico, but he planted deeper roots than most. Fellow master printmaker and Baumann’s soul-heir Tom Leech contributes a heartfelt reflection on decades spent working with the artist’s materials, upholding his legacy at Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors...
January 28, 2020
David Deutsch: Works 1968-2017
Don’t sleep on Deutsch. For the past fifty years, he has actively questioned the narrative of painting, photography, and image-making in general through highly innovative approaches. This monograph, put out by the can-do-no-wrong Radius Books here in Santa Fe, is full of surprises for any artist who claims to know all things Deutsch.
December 01, 2019
Book Review: Nature’s Nation
Nature’s Nation: American Art and Environment, which catalogues an exhibition that opened last fall at Princeton University Art Museum, proposes a reorientation for American art history around ecology and environmental history.
April 26, 2019
