Lualhati Torres Bautista was born in Tondo, Manila on December 2, 1946.  She became a fictionist and a movie scriptwriter through the influence of her parents, Esteban Bautista and Gloria Torres, who were into composing, singing and poem-writing.  She graduated from the Emilio Jacinto Elementary School in 1958 and from Torres High School in 1962.  Although she completed only a year of her journalism course, she already began her professional writing after graduating from high school.  She even became at one time the vice-president of the Screenwriters Guild of the Philippines and the chair of the Kapisanan ng mga Manunulat ng Nobelang Popular. She entitled her first screenplay Sakada in 1976 whose theme was the plight of Filipino minorities.  It was Martial Law then and the military banned the film for its very message, though it won awards in the Catholic Mass Media Awards during the same year.  Her second film was Kung Mahawi Man ang Ulap in 1984, which was nominated for awards in the Film Academy.  One of her best screenplays, also written during the same year was Bulaklak ng City Jail based on her novel about imprisoned women, has won almost all awards for that year from various awards guilds including Star Awards and Metro Manila Film Festival.            Being a good novelist as well, Lualhati garnered several Palanca grand prizes of 1980, 1983 and 1984 for her novels Gapo, Dekada ’70 and Bata, Bata… Pa’no Ka Ginawa? exposing injustice and women activism during the Marcos era.             She became a national fellow for fiction of the University of the Philippines Creative Writing Center in 1986, and won for herself several awards for her short stories such as "Tatlong Kuwento sa Buhay ni Juan Candelabra" and "Buwan, Buwan, Hulugan Mo Ako ng Sundang".