The best New Mexico women writers include Mary Austin from the Santa Fe art-colony years, Leslie Marmon Silko and Paula Gunn Allen of Laguna Pueblo, Ana Castillo and Denise Chávez among the Chicana novelists, and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Erna Fergusson, Agnes Morley Cleaveland and Peggy Pond Church in memoir and nonfiction, plus Willa Cather, a visitor who wrote the state's most famous novel. New Mexico's literature has been shaped by women from the start: the salon-builders who drew the art colony, the writers who first put the Hispano and Pueblo worlds on the page, and the contemporary novelists who carry it forward. This is a reader's path through them. For the full canon, see Best Books Set in New Mexico.
Published June 2026 · Curated by Josh Eldred, New Mexico Literacy Project
Death Comes for the Archbishop — Willa Cather
The greatest novel set in New Mexico, by one of America's great novelists. Cather's luminous account of two French priests building a diocese in the territorial Southwest, modeled on Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy and Joseph Machebeuf, remains the benchmark for writing the New Mexico landscape. Cather never lived here: she traveled the Southwest, worked on the book during a 1926 stay at Mary Austin's house in Santa Fe, and Knopf published it in 1927.
The Land of Journeys' Ending — Mary Austin
Austin, who settled in Santa Fe in the 1920s and co-founded the Spanish Colonial Arts Society with the artist Frank Applegate in 1925, was one of the first major nature writers of the Southwest. The Land of Journeys' Ending (1924) is her portrait of the Southwest she adopted, and The Land of Little Rain (1903), set in the California desert, is her classic. An outspoken early feminist and defender of Native American and Spanish-American rights, she died in Santa Fe in 1934.
Ceremony — Leslie Marmon Silko
Born in Albuquerque in 1948 and raised at Laguna Pueblo, Silko published Ceremony in 1977. The story of Tayo, a World War II veteran returning to the Laguna reservation, it is a foundational work of the Native American Renaissance and of New Mexico letters, and in 1981 Silko was among the first MacArthur Fellows. A central figure in any account of the state's literature, women's or otherwise.
The Woman Who Owned the Shadows, by Paula Gunn Allen
Allen, born in Cubero in 1939, identified with her mother's people at Laguna Pueblo and was a relative of Silko's. A poet, novelist and scholar, she wrote this 1983 novel about a mixed-blood woman struggling against isolation and the loss of self, and her essay collection The Sacred Hoop (1986) argued that European observers had played down the role of women in Native American cultures. She won an American Book Award in 1990.
So Far from God — Ana Castillo
The great modern Chicana novel of New Mexico: the magical-realist, fiercely funny, ultimately heartbreaking saga of Sofi and her four daughters in Tome, a Rio Grande village in Valencia County. Castillo, born in Chicago in 1953, has made her home in New Mexico, and W. W. Norton published the novel in 1993. A landmark of contemporary women's fiction.
Face of an Angel — Denise Chávez
Born in Las Cruces in 1948, Chávez won the 1995 American Book Award for Face of an Angel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994) and founded the Border Book Festival in her hometown. She writes the southern New Mexico borderland with humor and depth, and the novel follows a career waitress across decades of work and love.
We Fed Them Cactus — Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert
Usually credited as the first known published author of a New Mexican cookbook, Cabeza de Baca spent about thirty years as a home economist with the state's agricultural extension service, working in Hispano and Pueblo villages. We Fed Them Cactus (University of New Mexico Press, 1954) is her memoir of Hispano ranching life on the eastern plains: part history, part elegy, wholly essential. Pair it with her cookbook Historic Cookery.
No Life for a Lady, by Agnes Morley Cleaveland
Born in Cimarron in 1874, Cleaveland grew up on her family's ranch in western New Mexico and died in Datil in 1958. Houghton Mifflin published her memoir of that late-1800s ranch girlhood in 1941; it was a bestseller and went out in a special edition for the armed forces during World War II. It is a classic firsthand account of territorial New Mexico, told by the girl who lived it.
The House at Otowi Bridge — Peggy Pond Church
The poet of the mesa country that became Los Alamos (her father, Ashley Pond, founded the Los Alamos Ranch School in 1916) tells the story of Edith Warner, who ran a tearoom by the Rio Grande near San Ildefonso Pueblo that became a gathering place for the atomic scientists. The University of New Mexico Press published it in 1960. A quiet masterpiece by one of New Mexico's essential women of letters, and a natural companion to my Manhattan Project and Los Alamos reading list.
And beyond
The list runs deeper still: Albuquerque-born Erna Fergusson, who documented Southwestern ceremony in Dancing Gods (1931); Mabel Dodge Luhan, who built the Taos colony; the Native poets Joy Harjo and Luci Tapahonso, the first a Muscogee poet who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the University of New Mexico before serving as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022, the second born in Shiprock and named the Navajo Nation's first poet laureate in 2013; and Cleofas Jaramillo of Arroyo Hondo, the folklorist of Hispano village life, who helped found La Sociedad Folklórica in Santa Fe in 1935. In crime fiction, Anne Hillerman carries on her father's Navajo detective series, which leads my New Mexico mystery list, and more poets are gathered in Best New Mexico Poetry.
Frequently asked questions
Who are the most important women writers of New Mexico?
Mary Austin, Leslie Marmon Silko, Paula Gunn Allen, Ana Castillo, Denise Chávez, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, Erna Fergusson, Agnes Morley Cleaveland and Peggy Pond Church, along with Willa Cather, who visited rather than lived here but wrote Death Comes for the Archbishop.
What is the best book by a New Mexico woman writer?
Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop and Silko's Ceremony are the two landmarks.
Who was the first author of New Mexican cuisine?
Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert is usually credited as the first known published author of a New Mexican cookbook. Her Historic Cookery collected traditional recipes with exact measurements, and she also wrote the memoir We Fed Them Cactus.
Which New Mexico women writers were born in New Mexico?
Agnes Morley Cleaveland (Cimarron, 1874), Cleofas Jaramillo (Arroyo Hondo, 1878), Erna Fergusson (Albuquerque, 1888), Peggy Pond Church (Valmora, 1903), Paula Gunn Allen (Cubero, 1939), Leslie Marmon Silko (Albuquerque, 1948), Denise Chávez (Las Cruces, 1948) and Luci Tapahonso (Shiprock, 1953). Mary Austin, Willa Cather and Ana Castillo were born elsewhere.
Was Willa Cather a New Mexico writer?
Not by residence. Cather lived in New York and traveled through the Southwest, but she worked on Death Comes for the Archbishop during a 1926 stay at Mary Austin's house in Santa Fe, and Knopf published it in 1927. It remains the best-known novel set in New Mexico.
Cite This Guide
Eldred, J. (June 2026). Best New Mexico Women Writers. New Mexico Literacy Project.
https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/best-new-mexico-women-writers
Original curation by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.