A Lifelong Star Wars Fanatic Literally Wrote the Book on Princess Leia

Today, as the author of 15 young-adult novels, Castellucci has built her life around telling stories — and her lifelong dedication to Star Wars has paid off. Last year, Michael Siglain of Lucasfilm Press tapped her to pen one of a series of companion novels that came out a few months before 2015’s The Force Awakens.

"To get Lucasfilm to contact me and say, ‘Would you be interested in writing a Princess Leia story?’ I thought I was dreaming,” Castellucci says. Her New York Times best-selling book, Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure, takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, following Leia on a red-herring mission to distract the Empire from the Rebel Alliance’s preparations to attack a newly constructed Death Star.

While Castellucci’s latest novels, Tin Star and Stone in the Sky, are also stories about a woman fighting the power in outer space, she isn’t only a sci-fi writer. She’s written books about punk rockers, guerrilla art crews and hobos. But almost all share a central theme: a young woman finding her tribe.

”A Lifelong Star Wars Fanatic Literally Wrote the Book on Princess Leia,” LA Weekly, 4 May 2016