Pinoy Icons: Edith Tiempo

She kind of looks like the old lady on our street.

So, 2011 is the dying year for great female Filipino writers, is it? Dying just two days after another legend Kerima Polotan Tuvera, Edith Tiempo joins her as they debate endlessly on literary criticism in that big writers workshop in the sky.

Like Ms. Tuvera, Ms. Tiempo is also part of our literary canon in English. And I also don't remember reading any of her works. Woe is me. Anyway, all I remember from my college classes was that she was married to another writer, Edilberto K. Tiempo. And that they were like the Brownings (Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning) of the Philippines. Really now.

Anyway, she was born even before World War I broke out in Europe. Imagine that. Her legacy was establishing, along with her husband, the über-prestigious Silliman National Writers Workshop. This is like the holy grail for all Filipino literature students. I would of course only dream to get in. We shall see.

Wait, for someone who is married to another literary giant, why is Edith Tiempo's English Wikipedia page shorter than Kerima Polotan Tuvera's? Relatives and acolytes, get to work.


Edith L. Tiempo. 22 April 1919 - 21 August 2011. 


*some info and pic from Wikipedia here and here