Fangirls Around the Web: Celebration VI Edition
This week’s edition of Fangirls Around the Web catches up on all the amazing fangirls who made Celebration VI such a success, at the convention in Orlando and sharing it online for everyone who wasn’t able to attend.
There’s only one place to start, of course: With a big Thank You to Lucasfilm’s Mary Franklin for all of her tireless efforts to make the convention possible. Quite literally, without Mary there wouldn’t have been a Celebration to celebrate.
Kristen Hidalgo ran the Family Room Fun. With Spencer Brinkerhoff, Katie Cook, Dave Dorman and many other talented Star Wars artists stopping by, this was a room that brought out the kid in even the adults.
The official Star Wars Blog showcased several fangirl reporters during the convention. Amy Ratcliffe (@amy_geek) wrote reports on Ian McDiarmid‘s appearance, the Red Carpet Premiere of Season Five of The Clone Wars, the second Super Secret Panel for Star Wars Detours, the presentation on The Future of Star Wars in 3D, the Saturday night special with James Arnold Taylor‘s one-man show and Carrier Fisher‘s appearance, and Sunday’s panel with Sam Witwer. Jennifer Landa provided recaps of the first Detours panel, Mark Hamill‘s appearance, the live performance of Kyle Newman’s Smuggler’s Gambit radio play, and the Closing Ceremony.
The inexhaustible Ashley Eckstein gave fans a whole different perspective by recording a series of video blogs to thoroughly chronicle the convention. Don’t miss her videos for Preview Night and Days One, Two, Three, and Four.
A wide range of fansites covered Celebration, as well. On the Expanded Universe front, Dunc and Jawa James from ClubJade tweeted extensively, as well as an impressive pace of rapid posts updating the website.
Speaking of the EU, Lucasfilm senior editor Jen Heddle wrote up a great recap of the Del Rey panel for the Star Wars Blog. She also shared her enthusiasm for the upcoming Brian Wood Star Wars comic at his Friday evening panel. And newly announced EU author Martha Wells didn’t waste any time sharing her excitement about being selected to write an Original Trilogy era Leia book.
Cosplay is another mainstay of Star Wars conventions, and Celebration VI was no exception. As I already shared, Shea Standefer pretty much made my whole con by letting me wear her Jaina Solo X-wing costume on Friday morning. Shea and Victoria Schmidt each did some amazing cosplay at Celebration, and even a joint photo shoot as Aayla Secura and Ahsoka Tano. Be sure to check back on their Facebook pages for more photos as they update. I saw the irrepressible Savanna Kiefer cosplaying, too.
Victoria’s blog Set to Stunning also reports on the great non-cosplay geek chic outfits around Celebration.
Consetta Parker had a busy convention, too, keeping on top of the Rancho Obi-Wan Experience and all of James Arnold Taylor’s comings and goings. Another Parker Publicity client, Cat Taber, may not have been at the convention, but her presence definitely was felt: her voice appeared in the Star Wars Detours preview clip as Leia and her decoys Jeia, Meia, Teia and Zeia.
Finally, a big thank you to my intrepid FANgirl reporters for helping out with Expanded Universe author interviews: Linda talked to Drew Karpysyhn and Mary spent nearly an hour with Troy Denning.
Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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Wonderful post. A lot of women making great contributions
Another quiet group of women… Those who lead and worked the main stages. Yes guys were there and might have been in charge of one, helped but a majority were women both leading and working.
While at C6 I learned a bit about the core group of women working the stages who have helped with all the Celebrations. This is one of the neat stories I hope to learn more about in the future.