Roy Wilkinson has worked as a journalist, writer and editor for 30 years. He has worked for print titles and websites including The Guardian, The Independent, MOJO, Q, Sounds, Select, Kerrang!, Smash Hits, NME, The Westmorland Gazette, The Angling Times, Caught by the River and The Quietus. He has managed music groups including British Sea Power and Cornershop. His acclaimed rock/family/forestry non-fiction narrative Do It For Your Mum was published in 2011. “The year’s finest memoir,” said The Guardian.
Recently, Roy has written and published the “alphanumeric fictive progression” Dark Lustre – rock music and mythical gold set against a backdrop of Barnstaple, Berlin and Bavaria. Roy has also been preparing visual and sound art, as part of the Great South West Intergenerational Cultural Outreach organisation. Warning! Multi-media! Featuring words and music.
Roy is available for work as a writer and editor. He has overseen album releases for labels including Heavenly Recordings and Rough Trade, compiling all music, text and visuals.
Roy is also known for his distinctively expansive album sleeve notes, the so-called Erweiterte Umschlag-Notizen. He has written such sleeve notes for artists including Saint Etienne, Cornershop, British Sea Power and Soundgarden. As The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis said of Roy’s sleeve notes for British Sea Power’s Mercury-nominated 2008 album Do You Like Rock Music?: “Resurrects the lost [sleeve notes] art with aplomb… features an essay ostensibly detailing the album’s various recording sessions that keeps digressing into ever-more opaque areas: wrestling, the careers of Hedy Lamarr and TV naturalist Johnny Kingdom, and the existence of a Chatham pound shop called, unbelievably, the Disco Drug Store. It seems unlikely that you’ll find anything similar in the packaging of, say, the new album by the Kooks.”
Roy has a BSc in Ecological Science from the University Of Edinburgh and a Postgraduate Certificate in Magazine Journalism from City University, London.