Lucasfilm and Disney tasked five authors - Cavan Scott, Claudia Gray, Daniel José Older, Charles Soule, and Justina Ireland - to work with the Lucasfilm Story Group and a team of concept artists to imagine this new world, and carve out canonized stories that were, for the first time in years (and arguably ever), removed from the movie trilogies. Taking place 200 years before the events of The Phantom Menace, a Pax Romana period when the Jedi were at the top of their game, and one devastating event splinters them in every direction, The High Republic books are meant to feel like a cinematic event in their own right. Dubbed “The High Republic,” the publishing initiative would encompass adult, middle-grade, and YA fiction, as well as comics, to tell an interconnected set of stories. 24, Lucasfilm and Disney ushered in a new era of Star Wars.

But the story plans haven’t changed - read on for a massive preview of the launch title A Test of Courage. She holds a BA in History from Georgia Southern and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University.This May, Lucasfilm delayed the rollout of Star Wars: The High Republic to January 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. She is a former editor in chief of FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, for which she won a World Fantasy Award. Justina Ireland is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books including Dread Nation and its sequel Deathless Divide, the middle-grade novel Ophie's Ghosts, which won the Scott O'Dell award for historical fiction, and a number of Star Wars books including Flight of the Falcon: Lando’s Luck, Spark of the Resistance, A Test of Courage, Out of the Shadows, and Mission to Disaster. She holds a BA in History from Georgia Southern and an MFA in Creative Writing from Hamline University.

Justina ireland