CELEBRATION!

(Folks arriving here from my newsletter - you’ll see some duplication at the start of this post with some of the info I provided about Celebration there… but don’t worry. The news stuff starts a few paragraphs down!)

In the old days, the good people at Lucasfilm would throw a big convention every year focused on Star Wars. It was a truly groovy thing - thousands of people coming together as fans of the galaxy far, far away. Prior to the pandemic, I'd been twice - but the last one before the pandemic was in Chicago all the way back in April 2019.

So, when they finally held another, in Anaheim California from May 26th to May 29th of this year, you can bet I was there. It was wild. It felt like people had been saving up their Star Wars love for all that time, and you could feel it everywhere. Such a positive, thrilling environment.

I found it particularly cool because some big things have happened in my own Star Wars career since 2019 - the High Republic, among others - and it was a chance for me and the other Luminous writers to finally meet the THR fans in person and understand what we'd accomplished. We did tons of interviews, I wore some sweaters... it was a blast.

That shot above is of me, the wonderful Krystina Arielle and two of my High Republic co-creators Cavan Scott and Claudia Gray (well, her leg, anyway) on the Star Wars Celebration Live stage being interviewed (live! no screwups allowed!) for the crowd there as well as being streamed out for zillions (literally!) of people all over the world. Heady stuff.

Every single day of Celebration had its highlights, but it would be hard not to single out the huge High Republic panel on the first day of the show. This took place in the biggest panel room at the convention (yes, there was one larger space where they did some special events, but it was literally an arena. We - Claudia Gray, Justina Ireland, Daniel Jose Older, Cavan Scott, Lucasfilm Publishing super-exec Mike Siglain and me - were on the Galaxy Stage for the High Republic panel, a 4,000 seat room, and we filled the damn thing. Here’s a shot of my view from the stage:

The lights were so bright I couldn’t see the back of the room - we could hear everyone but not see them. It wasn’t until the lights went up at the end of the show that we really realized what was happening in there. It was an incredible feeling. If you were there… thank you. It meant everything to all of us.

I didn’t just do that panel, though - I also participated in the Wide World of Wookiees panel on Sunday, where I felt totally outclassed (but thrilled!) to chat our gigantic furry friends with Joonas Suatomo (Chewbacca), Carey Jones (Krrsanatan) and Angie Mayhew, wife of Peter Mayhew, the original Chewbacca and first actor to ever portray a Wookiee onscreen. I was there to talk about Burryaga, a Wookiee Jedi I created for the High Republic - and wow, I was excited to be in that room. (Look at me! I’m a dork!)

There’s so much more to say, but it would take forever to type all those words, so I’m going to let some photos I took do the work for me. Enjoy this scattershot journey through my time at Star Wars Celebration!

At the airport on the way out - TONS of signage around for Kenobi - the perfect way to start getting me hyped for the adventures to come.

My assistant’s name is Tommy - he’s awesome! That said, I have to say that meeting this robot assistant with an astonishingly coincidental name did get me thinking…

I knew the High Republic would get some love at Celebration, and I wanted to do what I could to support that. So, I had these beautiful pins made up, which I gave out to anyone I saw at the show dressed in High Republic cosplay or as one of my characters. We made 100 and gave them all out (barring a few I held back.) We are truly… All the Republic!

One of my favorite, favorite moments was being inducted into Pride Squadron alongside the other High Republic authors. We’ve tried to make the High Republic a truly inclusive storytelling world, with representation of people of all backgrounds and experiences. We hadn’t had a chance to see (in person) how all that impacted people… and things like this made it clear. Felt great. For light and life!

People were so creative with their High Republic fandom! There isn’t much official merch out there (yet), so fans made their own! This is a hand-made, custom Avar Kriss Funko. Gorgeous!

Two Marchion Ros and two Lourna Dees! WILD to see people doing this stuff. This was part of a huge cosplay meetup on Friday afternoon. There were so many people in High Republic gear… even several Geodes!

Yes, I posed with the Marchions. These moments don’t come around all that often!

We had a gigantic book signing (scheduled for 90 minutes, went for three hours) where we met so many fans of the High Republic - many in custom outfits like this awesome person here! (Check out that mask!)

This is making me smile just looking at it - Team Luminous (sadly minus Claudia Gray who was out and about elsewhere) at Star Wars Night at Disneyland on Friday night. This was like 1 in the morning and we were SO FRIED… but so happy, too. These are great, great people.

Lots of stuff around the show connected to things I’ve created - like this massive Ninth Sister Inquisitor!

And one of several Crimson Reign Qi’ras I saw!

There was a bit of official THR merch around, including these awesome t-shirts at the Celebration store.

There’s plenty more I could say about Celebration - I’m only scratching the surface. There were so many little moments, so many connections I got to make with friends old and new… if I wrote it all up I’d be here until next Celebration… which is April 2023 in London! I’ll be there for sure, and hope to see many of you there as well.

WE ARE ALL THE REPUBLIC!