Rebecca Slaven eats more than any human I have ever seen. And she is the skinniest burlesque accordion player in town. She loves her KFC as much as she loves pretending to be a drag queen on a regular basis. She is a librarian, freelance writer and Sad Mag’s Web Editor. I mostly know her from the mess she makes in the kitchen when eating. So all the time.
-Brandon Gaukel, room mate and Creative Director of Sad Mag

The Proof

1. Lucy the beagle. She’s trained me not to leave food anywhere but the kitchen counters.
2. I’m a librarian living in the Sad Mag house – magazines and books overtake my life.
3. Wall of vanity. I would be terribly vain if my photographer friends didn’t keep me moderately humble with their sass.
4. Burlesque kit. Spending a lot of time with drag queens has clearly rubbed off on me.
5. Leona the bike. Named after a restaurant (best pie of my life!) that my boyfriend and I stopped at while cycling from Van to San Fran last month.
6. My friends call me Snackasaurus Becks and my spirit animal is the giraffe – it was with much glee I discovered the two came together in the form of measuring spoons. Admittedly, many of them have been superglued back together since I’m extremely clumsy.
7. My mother’s entirely useless but beautiful parka from my hometown of Yellowknife.
8. KFC. Close enough that on a windy day I can smell it from my house.

The Questions

What neighborhood do you live in?
Mount Pleasant.

What do you do and where?
I’m finishing up my Master’s in Library Studies at UBC and I work at a few libraries on campus – teaching, cataloguing, telling people where the bathroom is. I play accordion in a band, Teapot Hill, and I do an accordion-burlesque act under the moniker of Dusty Volumes. As part of the Sad Mag family, I regularly write about the amazing people in this city and their artistic ventures.

What are you working on?
Lots! At Rare Books & Special Collections, I digitize and catalogue a collection of croquet images – everything from dioramas of taxidermied kittens to ‘50s pornography. It’s weird but entertaining. I’m also in the midst of my new role as web editor for Sad Mag and we’ve started contributing to Granville Mag’s Secret City blog series. And as always, I try to update my personal blog, which is pretty much a compilation of embarrassing stories.

Where can we find your work?
Sad Mag
Granvilleonline.ca/secretcity
Bookplates
Blog