​Hello Fandom family! We've got some big announcements for you, so hold on to your seats!

If you've been following us on social media, you know that we are brimming with excitement at the chance to bring you an exclusive special preview of LOOKING FOR LEIA at Dragon Con 2019. We've been hard at work in post-production to complete this docu-series, and we are thrilled to be sharing a first look with you in just a few short days!

Our panel will also include a Q&A with our director Annalise Ophelian, our art director Alyssa Bradley, and three very special guests who are featured in LOOKING FOR LEIA. We're excited for you to meet author Tracy Deonn Walker, and Stardust Builders Initiative co-founders and droid builders Naila Browne and Christina Cato! 

We hope you can join us on Friday, 8/30, in the Hyatt Hanover C-E for this special screening event! The first 50 attendees will receive LOOKING FOR LEIA swag bags, so show up early!

After our special screening and Q&A, we'll be celebrating with a fan meetup in the Twenty-Two Storys brewpub in the Hyatt. We'd love to spend some time geeking out with our friends and supporters to mark this momentous occasion!

We appreciate all the love and support you've given us during every stage of production. We know not everyone can join us at Dragon Con this year, but don't despair! In the coming weeks we'll have news about where the series will be premiering this fall, and we'll have some special preview treats for Seed & Spark and Kickstarter backers.

We've got amazing things in the works, and we can't wait to debut the entire project and share these inspiring stories with you.

As always, we couldn't do this without you. We'd love it if you'd share the word about the project and the Dragon Con first look with your friends and social networks, join us where you can, and keep creating the fandom spaces you wish to see in the world. You each inspire us every single day.

"The belonging you seek is not behind you- it is ahead."

Love,
​
The LOOKING FOR LEIA Team

We're wrapping up a festive Pride Month here at Looking for Leia, which has been spent largely in post-production, but also we've created some rainbow-tastic new designs for our pop-up shop!

All of our shop proceeds in June are being donated to Trans Lifeline, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of trans lives by responding to the critical needs of our community with direct service, material support, advocacy, and education.

We've also whipped up some phone wallpapers for you, so you can fly your colors for the rest of June and all year long. Just save the image you like to your phone and set it to your home or lock screen!

Wishing you and those you love a beautiful and powerful Pride Month!

Fly casual,

​Annalise

As we complete post-production on LOOKING FOR LEIA, we're also looking for ways to stay connected with fans! Do you want to keep up-to-date on our latest news, giveaways, and awesome content?

We've compiled a shortlist of links to all the official places you can find LOOKING FOR LEIA around the web, in one easy-to-share place!

​Every like, share, and subscribe matters because fans like you help spread the message and mission behind LOOKING FOR LEIA. You are the spark. We smashed our Kickstarter because of you. We won the Seed&Spark #100DaysOfOptimism rally, because of you. But, there is still work to be done.

Our visibility and social media following comes with us into pitch meetings, and will help us secure a streaming or broadcast home that will connect these stories with the largest audience possible. Where will LOOKING FOR LEIA go next?

​Wherever you take us.

As always, we are forever grateful for your support. 
These are your stories. Thank you for letting us be the storytellers. 

Love,

The LOOKING FOR LEIA Team 

Last week, I took a short trip to Seattle to record some voice over with Maggie Nowakowska, whose basement office is, among other geeky delights, a treasure trove of fanzine history.

I had the chance to interview Maggie twice over the course of filming on Looking for Leia, and hear her stories about fanzine communities starting with Star Trek in the late 1960s. Trek fanzines paved the way for Star Wars fanzines, and both franchises inspired hundreds upon hundreds of zines written and edited largely by women. As Maggie put it, there were always a few guys around in fanzine fandom, but this was a woman's world.

Author (and fanzine editor) Jeanine Hennig happened to be visiting that day as well, and as luck would have it, Maggie had a collection of Trek zines in her archives, which they searched through and organized for some b-roll shots.

Here's a little peek at them all laid out

Of course, fan lit is alive and thriving in on-line spaces. But these early analog zines, and the way they were curated and produced, is a rich part of fandom history and a testament to how women have always been a creative, generative presence in both Star Trek and Star Wars fandom.

We're so excited to feature this meaningful collection in LOOKING FOR LEIA.

LLAP (and MTFBWY),
- Annalise

I've been fed this week on social media with everyone's amazing recaps, threads, and photo albums of their time in Chicago, it definitely helps soften the con drop. This was my fourth Celebration (the first was Anaheim in 2015), and the love among fans was absolutely palpable. For the franchise, for the artists who create it, for each other.  

I'm tucking back into post-production, but wanted to share some of what I filmed at Celebration. Over 100 people let me point a camera at them for our b-roll last weekend, but unlike Orlando in 2017, this year so many folks knew about Looking for Leia and were excited to connect with us. And we were thrilled to connect with all of you!

The recap reel features an arrangement of Rey's Theme created by Kate Burns and performed by singers from the Archer School for Girls. It's just one of the pieces created for Looking for Leia, we can't wait to share the rest.

MTFBWY,

Annalise