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Kerima Polotan Tuvera (December 16, 1925 – August 19, 2011) was a Filipino author. She is best known for her work

Early life

Born in Jolo, Sulu, she was christened Putli Kerima. Her father was an army colonel, and her mother taught home economics. Due to her father's frequent transfers in assignment, she lived in various places and studied in the public schools of Pangasi, Tarlac, Laguna, Nueva Ecija and Rizal. She graduated from the Far Eastern University Girls' High School. In 1944 she enrolled in the University of the Philippines School of Nursing. In 1945 she shifted to Arellano University where she attended the writing classes of Teodoro M. Locsin and edited the first number of the Arellano Literary Review. Her education was interrupted by illness, financial difficulties, and later marriage and the care of her five children. Some of her stories have been published under the pseudonym Patricia S. Torres.

Personal life

In 1949, she married Juan Capiendo Tuvera, a childhood friend and fellow writer, with whom she had 10 children. Between the years 1966 to 1986, her husband served as the Executive Secretary of then President Marcos. Her husband's work drew her into the charmed circle of the Marcoses.

Roles during the Martial Law Years

During the years of martial law, she founded and edited the officially approved FOCUS Magazine as well as the Evening Post newspaper. She taught in Albay High School and at Arellano University. She worked with Your Magazine, This Week and the Junior Red Cross Magazine.

Works and awards

Her 1952 short story, The Virgin, won two first prizes – the Free Press short story prize of Php1,000 and the Palanca Memorial Award. In 1957 she edited the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, a book containing English and Tagalog prize winning short stories from 1951 to 1952. Her novel The Hand of the Enemy (1962) won the Stonehill Award of Php10,000 for the Filipino novel in English. Some of her famous short stories are : "A Place to Live In", "Gate", "The Keeper", "There's a Teenager in the House", "The Mats" and "The Sounds of Sunday". Adventures in a Forgotten Country is her latest collection of essays. She is the editor of Focus Philippines, the Orient News and the Evening Post.

In 1968, she published Stories, a collection of eleven stories which she claimed a "thin harvest" for the twenty years she had been writing. In 1970, she wrote Imelda Romualdez Marcos, a Biography. That was the same year that she collected forty-two of her hard-hitting essays during her years as a staff writer of the Philippine Free Press and published them under the title Author's Circle. In 1976, she edited the four-volume Anthology of Don Palanca Memorial Award Winners. In 1977, she published another collection of thirty-five essays, Adventures in a Forgotten Country. In the late 1990s, the University of the Philippines Press republished all of her major works.

The 1961 Stonehill Award was bestowed on Polotan , for her novel The Hand of the Enemy. In 1963, she received the Republic Cultural Heritage Award, an award discontinued in 2003 but was then considered the government’s highest form of recognition for artists at the time.

Legacy

The city of Manila conferred on Polotan-Tuvera its Patnubay ng Sining at Kalinangan Award in recognition of her contributions to its intellectual and cultural life.

Upon her death and that of Edith L. Tiempo, the Malacañang Palace through Presidential Spokesperson Edwin Lacierda issued a statement: "The Aquino administration is united in grief with a country that mourns their passing." The official statement recognized Polotan's body of work as " crucial to the development of Philippine Literary Fiction written from English" and cited Polotan's influence on "generations of writers."

External links

• Full Text: The Virgin by Kerima Polotan

Category:1925 births Category:2011 deaths Category:People from Sulu Category:Filipino women writers Category:Arellano University alumni Category:Place of death missing