The Future is Female.
But in a galaxy far, far away, so is a A Long Time Ago.
There are a lot of ways you could chronicle the adventures of the women ofStar Wars.
Chronicle Books (2)
Its more … inspirational.
Even for the bad guys why theyre cool.Exactly.
Sometimes you could find at traits you like.
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Phasma is pretty terrible, but she was really ambitious, really persistent.
Just … not for good ends.
Hearing about the tone [Chronicle Books] wanted to take, I use the word celebrate a lot.
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Its not a photo book.
Each character gets original pieces of art.
How did you recruit your group of illustrators?
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And in some cases, like for characters from the novels, maybe we havent seen them ever.
This is my dream, and we went from there.
It all happened very quickly.
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It couldnt have been too quick.
You said there are 75 characters in the book?
So I can get more information to refresh my memory.
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It was the best and worst kind of research, I like to say.
And in some ways, still is.
Its like what do I say about this character that people dont already know?
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And how do I do her justice?
She was the character I put off for as long as I could to write.
I was intimidated because you dont want to mess up especially Leia.
Theres always a debate in fandom about whats canon and whats not.
Did you stick strictly to canon in your profiles?For fictional references, I absolutely stuck to canon.
So you kind of had to consider some of that, and it was definitely a balance.
Im like, You know what?
So you kind of make a run at find where did they go astray?
You are such an authority onStar Wars, and people probably know you host panels at Star Wars Celebration.
you write for StarWars.com.
So theyre geared towards pretty young kids, and they have some illustrations.
And when I was looking at the list, Im like, I dont know who this is.
But it was an excuse to buy some moreStar Warsbooks, so that was cool.
Its still lighthearted, but it is a lot of survival.
You know you had Mon Mothma leading the rebellion.
You have Princess Leia.
In the prequels, Padme Amidala.
But now, we have Jyn.
We have Admiral Holdo.
How have things changed since you were a little girl versus being a grown up fan of Star Wars?
And Padme, I think is an incredible character.
But I dont think we started on the screen seeing more female characters untilThe Clone Warswith Ahsoka Tano.
And you would get asked weird trivia questions to prove it.
Thats, thankfully, not as much the case anymore.
To test whether youre a true fan, right?Ugh.
True fan just makes me instantly angry regardless of the context that its used in.
And Ashley, of course, is the voice of Ahsoka, too.
If you want a story about bounty hunters.
If you want a story about an archeologist going on adventures, you have that with Doctor Aphra.
We have women and female characters in all different shades.
And that was desperately needed.
Im glad were here, and there can only be more progress.
