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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 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 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 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).
Elizabeth Lillehoja is a former research associate of the Museum of International Folk Art and a professor emeritus of Asian art history at DePaul University, Chicago. Her research focus is premodern Japanese art. Her 2011 book, Art and Palace Politics in Japan, 1580s–1680s, appears in Brill’s Japanese Visual Culture series
![A painted wooden panel depicts a traditional boat carrying figures in Japanese attire across stylized waves, with mountains and Japanese script in the background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/shrinefeatured-400x225.jpg)
By Elizabeth Lillehoj A colorful painting on a wooden tablet in the Museum of International Folk Art features the Japanese legend of Empress Jingū. Painted in 1862, the Jingū votive tablet looks back to Japan’s premodern interactions with its neighbor, Korea. But the painting has little to do with facts; instead, it presents distorted memories of ancient events and reactions to threats facing Japan in the nineteenth century.
