Kerima Polotan Tuvera

Kerima Polotan Tuvera (born in Jolo, Sulu on December 16, 1925) is a Filipina authoress.

Early life

She was cristened as Putli Kerima, putli meaning princess.

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 Pangasinan, 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 has been repeatedly interrupted by illness, financial difficulties and later marriage and the care of children of which she has five. She is a prolific writer. Some of her stories have been published under the pseudonym of Patricia S. Torres.

In 1949, she had married Juan Tuvera, a childhood friend and fellow writer, with whom she had 10 children. Between the years 1966 to 1970, her husband served as the Executive Secretary of then President Marcos. Her husband's work drew her into the charmed circle of the Marcoses.

During the Martial Law years, she founded and edited the officially approved "FOCUS Magazine" as well as the "Evening Post" newspaper.

Tuvera has taught in Albay High School and at Arellano University.

She has worked with "Your Magazine", "This Week" and the "Junior Red Cross Magazine". Recently she went to the United States on a Department of State Specialist Grant.

In 1952 her 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 1950 to 1955. 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", "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. But they were certainly her best, several among the most frequently anthologized stories even today.

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.

She now has a book titled "The True and The Plain", a collection of essays about her childhood memories.

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