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Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa (29 December 1904 – 11 November 1994), popularly known by his pen name Kuvempu, was an Indian novelist, poet, playwright, and critic. He is widely regarded as the greatest Kannada poet of the 20th century. He was the first Kannada writer to be decorated with the Jnanpith Award.
Kuvempu studied at Mysuru University in the 1920s, taught there for nearly three decades and served as its Vice-chancellor from 1956 to 1960. He spearheaded the movement to make Kannada the medium for education, emphasizing the theme "Education in the Mother tongue”.
Kuvempu started his literary work in English, with a collection of poetry called Beginner's Muse, but later switched to his native language Kannada, and wrote 62 books and enriched Kannada literature in the areas of novels, short stories, poetry, epic poems, drama, essays, literary criticism, children poetry, children stories, personality development of youth, autobiography, and poetics. To cater to the needs of Kannada research, he founded the Kannada Adhyayana Samsthe ("Institute of Kannada Studies") in the Mysore University, which has since been renamed after him as "Kuvempu Institute of Kannada Studies". For his contributions to Kannada Literature, the Government of Karnataka decorated him with the honorific title “Rashtrakavi” ("National Poet") in 1964 and Karnataka Ratna ("The Gem of Karnataka") in 1992. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 1988. He penned the Karnataka State Anthem “Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate”.
