GLEN RETIEF
AUTHOR OF ‘THE JACK BANK‘
Winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an Africa Book Club feature in 2012
MY BOOKS
Glen Retief is an Associate Professor of nonfiction writing at Susquehanna University. His The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood won a Lambda Literary Award.
DAILY MAVERICK ARTICLES
Since 2016, Glen has written “slice of life” or literary journalism articles for the Daily Maverick. These highlight quirky stories, forgotten histories, or offbeat places.
OTHER ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Find a selection of Glen’s essays, on topics ranging from ownership to water to the meditations of Basho, the seventeenth century haiku master.
BOOK REVIEW
“Glen Retief’s remarkable book, The Jack Bank, is a memoir with the deeply resonant literary power of the finest fiction. Retief explores his formative years as a South African white boy discovering his gayness and the hard truths of apartheid, and he does so with the sensual particularity and the scene-based drama and the pitch-perfect narrative voice of a brilliant novel. He profoundly addresses the great theme of literature: who am I and where do I belong? The Jack Bank is an important book by a supremely gifted writer.”
—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer-winning author of Good Scent From a Strange Mountain
