Star Wars Celebration Chicago: Journey to Episode IX and more publishing previews

The Lucasfilm Publishing panel at Star Wars Celebration Chicago was all about the present and the future of Star Wars in print form.

If you’ve read a Star Wars book in the past five years or so, you’d probably recognize at least one name among the authors at the Lucasfilm Publishing panel at Star Wars Celebration Chicago on Friday. Among those present were Claudia Gray, Timothy Zahn, E.K. Johnston, Delilah S. Dawson, Alexander Freed, Zorida Córdova, Justina Ireland, Jeffrey Brown, and more — spanning all ages in terms of audience, but all united by Star Wars.

Presumably, some of them might be part of the biggest announcement made at that panel. As with the previous two films, there will be a Journey to Episode IX publishing campaign. Journey to The Last Jedi, for example, included both Phasma and Leia, Princess of Alderaan. Unfortunately, no real details were given, but the important part is that it’s real and coming.

When it comes to the Galaxy’s Edge tie-ins, and to connect to Phasma, Dawson’s Black Spire features characters from that novel — Cardinal and Vi, specifically, with Vi apparently given a task by none other than Leia Organa to establish a new outpost on Batuu. Both she and Córdova, who penned the upcoming A Crash of Fate as part of the same program, admitted that they’ve had to ask some weird questions about Batuu — including, Dawson said, what it might smell like. (The answer? Grilled meat and probably spices.)

The latter book also got a new cover, revealed for the first time at the panel:

Also hotly anticipated is Zahn’s latest book on Grand Admiral Thrawn. Though he couldn’t give much away, Thrawn: Treason will heavily feature Grand Moff Tarkin and Director Krennic of A New Hope and Rogue One fame, respectively. “Thrawn supposedly gets suckered in,” he explained of the three’s dynamic, but the plot “does not turn out the way [Tarkin and Krennic] expect.” After all, Thrawn comes off as someone who doesn’t do so well with the politics of being an Imperial commander. That’s all what fans have come to expect of Thrawn, and Zahn also pointed out that writing such a smart character “takes days” for him to figure out.

In the more distant future is Ireland’s next book, which will feature the Millennium Falcon and “of course” stormtroopers while staying in the middle-grade genre. That’s all she could get away with saying, and moderator Michael Siglain of Lucasfilm had to tease those answers out of her.

In the more immediate future, however, is Gray’s Master and Apprentice, which drops next week. She joked that she wanted “a five-volume biography of Qui-Gon,” but settled on one key moment: “What would really be fundamental in terms of turning him away from the [Jedi] Council.” But Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s relationship has also “gone wrong a little bit too long,” and she admitted that as we find them in the book, “Yeah, they’re not doing so great.”

But what was most apparent through all of this was how much these writers love Star Wars. Freed said he would love to “get mystical” in upcoming books, although his upcoming Alphabet Squadron is very much grounded in pilots, B-Wings (his favorite ship), and Hera Syndulla taking command. Johnston spoke of seeing The Phantom Menace when she was 15 and falling in love with Padmé Amidala before getting to write Queen’s Shadow. Brown said that he needed time “as a fan” with Star Wars before coming back with Rey & Pals (which, we’ll be honest, had the cutest art). Dawson said that her upcoming The Skywalker Saga is “a book full of tears … tears of happiness.” All of the authors have come back for more, time and again.

With new titles coming out this summer and, presumably, into the fall and winter when we get closer to The Rise of Skywalker, it’s a good time to be a fan of Star Wars books.

Stay tuned for more from Star Wars Celebration Chicago all weekend long!