Glen Retief

Glen Retief is a South African writer[1] who won a Lambda Literary Award in 2012 for his memoir The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood.[2] The Jack Bank was also an Africa Book Club Book of 2011.

Retief grew up in South Africa's Kruger National Park, where his father was a park warden.[3] He later attended a boarding school before studying English at the University of Cape Town.[3] As an anti-apartheid and LGBT rights activist in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was part of the group that successfully lobbied for sexual orientation to be included in the Constitution of South Africa as a prohibited grounds of discrimination.[3] His essay "Keeping Sodom Out of the Laager" appeared in Defiant Desire, an influential anthology of South African LGBT writing published in 1996.[3]

He currently lives in Sunbury, Pennsylvania with his husband, American performance artist and Bible scholar Peterson Toscano,[4] and teaches English literature and creative writing at Susquehanna University.[1]

References
  1. "Glen Retief: Coming of Age in South Africa". Lambda Literary Review, 13 May 2011.
  2. "24th Annual Lambda Literary Award winners announced". Windy City Times, 5 June 2012.
  3. "Goucher Presents South African Writer Glen Retief". Goucher College, 11 October 2011.
  4. "Gay 'conversion' therapies give moral authority to bullies, says ex-missionary". The Guardian, 13 April 2012.


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