Milliken, Robert

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Milliken, Robert

PERSONAL: Male.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Australian Literary Management, 2-A Booth St., Balmain, New South Wales 2041, Australia.

CAREER: Writer and journalist. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, journalism fellow. Economist, Australian correspondent. Varuna—The Writers' House, Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia, member of board of directors.

WRITINGS:

No Conceivable Injury (nonfiction), Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1986.

On the Edge: The Changing World of Australia's Farmers, photographs by Lorrie Graham, Simon & Schuster (East Roseville, New South Wales, Australia), 1992.

Lillian Roxon: Mother of Rock, Black Inc. (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), 2002, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Has written for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States.

SIDELIGHTS: Author and journalist Robert Milliken is a nonfiction writer based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, whose works have addressed important historical and social concerns throughout the world and in his native country. No Conceivable Injury chronicles the British atomic weapons tests in the Australian desert region of Maralinga and a purported cover-up of the effects by British and Australian officials. On the Edge: The Changing World of Australia's Farmers explores the nature of agriculture in Australia and how farmers are adapting to changes in the way crops and livestock are grown and processed in modern farm operations.

In Lillian Roxon: Mother of Rock Milliken constructions a biography of Roxon, an influential rock journalist who worked and lived in New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the most turbulent and dynamic years of rock-music history. Roxon, whose family fled Italy and the Nazis when she was eight years old, spent her early years in Australia. In 1959, she moved to the United States, where she became one of the rock scene's best-known figures; her personal social circle included cultural icons such as Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Germaine Greer, and other celebrities of the day. As a rock critic in New York, Roxon had unparalleled access to the venues and the performers she wrote about. She thrived due to a combination of her accessible, colloquial writing style and a deep love of the music she wrote about. Her seminal Rock Encyclopedia, first published in 1969, "remains a remarkable overview of the 1960s record industry," commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly.

Roxon's story is marred by tragedy, too. Her best friend, Linda Eastman, severed all ties when she married Beatle Paul McCartney and became Linda McCartney. Roxon's first love died at age twenty-two, and two other important male figures in her life also perished at early ages. Roxon herself died at age forty-one, in 1973, a victim of the asthma that had plagued her throughout her life. Despite recounting these tragedies, Milliken's tone remains upbeat and optimistic, dwelling on the triumph's and joys of Roxon's life rather than her setbacks. In the end, Roxon remains an important journalist and "the woman who shaped how Americans think about rock 'n' roll," remarked a Kirkus Reviews contributor.

"This lively book is as much a portrait of a journalist as the era she covered," noted the Publishers Weekly reviewer. In Lillian Roxon Milliken offers "a vivid depiction of the eventful but all-too-brief life of this independent, freethinking, and talented woman," commented Library Journal reviewer Carol J. Binkowski.