Glen Retief

Glen Retief is the author of the The Jack Bank: A Memoir of a South African Childhood, which won a Lambda Literary Award and was selected an Africa Book Club Pick of the Year. His literary journalism and personal essays have appeared in Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Hotel Amerika, TriQuarterly, and Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. He reviews books for River Teeth and for the South African Mail and Guardian and writes a regular column of creative nonfiction for Daily Maverick, South Africa’s biggest newspaper. He teaches creative nonfiction at Susquehanna University.

Note

I have provided feedback for many writers, from literary superstars to South African high school students writing about life in shantytowns. No matter whom I’m helping, I always give intense attention to sentences, language, structure, and ideas.  

First, I will give your work a quick read, just to get an overall sense of it.  

Then I will ask you about your goals, audience, and aesthetic, as well as what kind of help you’re looking for with a particular piece.  

Finally, I will share with you detailed manuscript comments, and we will have an unrushed conversation about different options for you going forward.

Fees and Packages

My basic fee is $200 an hour, for reading work, commenting on it, or meeting and discussing it.  

I do have special packages available, for example:

–Short memoir or essay consultation, up to 8,000 words, $650.

–Book, up to 80,000 words, $5000.