Roz Milner

Roz Milner is a freelance writer and critic. Her writing has appeared in Lambda Literary, Broken Pencil, Exclaim! Magazine, Xtra, Into More, and many other places. As of this writing, she is cited on Wikipedia for both the Ikea shark and for Van Morrison, which she thinks shows her range as good as anything else.

She lives in a fortified bunker north of Toronto, Ontario with her cat Tucker. She is currently not on Twitter.

Some highlights

Meet the ‘Lobster Claw’ and ‘Orange Crush’ of gender-affirming surgery (Xtra Magazine, Feb. 2022)

How A Stuffed IKEA Shark Became A Transgender Icon (Into, Feb. 2022)

Road Trip (The Quarantine Review, Issue 14)

Some of my fave posts:

Milner on Music
Our Strange Relationship
I’ve been thinking about Frank Zappa lately. Why? A few days ago, writer and critic Steve Smith wrote a little post (and some tweets) about seeing The Zappa Band, and mentioned he used to be a fan, then went through a period where he wasn’t, but has sort of come around a little. And it got me to thinking about how I, a trans woman in her mid 30s, thinks…
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Milner on Music
Seduced By Song Vol. 1 - The Dreamer’s Disease
It was easy to be a cynic in the 90s. There was something in the air: the President was caught in a stupid lie, the X-Files was on TV, and alternative rock took a world-weary, almost jaded turn. Indeed, as older bands like REM, Jane’s Addiction, and Depeche Mode became the mainstream, major labels started looking for the next big thing. Artists like Bec…
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Milner on Music
The New Standard
It’s late at night, sometime around 2005. I’m in my parents basement, listening to ESPN Radio and probably playing NHL 2004 or something. And then it comes on the radio: that countdown, the bursts of horns and a distinctive bass line. It was “Tank!” by The Seatbelts, famously used as the theme to…
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Milner on Music
Let Us Now Raze Famous Death Dwarves
Earlier this year, we hit the 40th anniversary of Lester Bang’s death. He was born in 1948, died in early 1982, and was for a time a deeply influential rock critic. His career started in the late 1960s, when he started contributing to Rolling Stone, and it went on until he died: his last piece ran a few days before his accidental overdose. He’s best rem…
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Milner on Music
Getting to the Bottom of "Trans Lit"
Question: What is trans lit? Short Answer: whatever you want it to be. Long Answer: I don’t know. Maybe something, but most likely, it’s nothing. I was in the audience for a panel the other day that was about something loosely defined as “The Trans Year of Creativity.” And, I dunno, it was weird? It was loosely about the books that have come out this year…
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Milner on Music
On "A Dream of A Woman"
The last few days I’ve been reading Casey Plett’s new collection of stories A Dream of a Woman, and it’s great. Stories about transition, about trans people struggling with addiction and figuring their shit out, boozy nights of Smash and PBR. We’re about the same age, I think, and it’s like she was taking notes back when she was in school. It resonates…
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everyone’s fave music, books, etc, etc writer // @milnerroz // she/her