Thrawn is coming back to rule the Star Wars universe, and Timothy Zahn is coming back to rule the Washington State Summer Con again this year. Please welcome back the New York Times Best Selling Author and one of the most prolific Star Wars authors and creator of the supervillain Grand Admiral Thrawn back to Puyallup from June 21st-23rd.
Zahn is responsible for creating numerous characters and writing so many beloved legends and now canon books in the Star Wars Universe. Zahn wrote Heir to the Empire which many are expecting to be the next source or basis for the upcoming Dave Filioni movie currently in production. Apart from Mr. Lucas himself, few storytellers have been involved with the Star Wars franchise as long as Timothy.
Timothy Zahn was born in Chicago in 1951 and grew up in the western suburb of Lombard. He attended Michigan State University, earning a B.S. degree in physics in 1973, and moved on to the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. He earned a M.S. degree there, also in physics, in 1975, and continued work toward a doctorate. Also in 1975, he began a new hobby: writing science fiction. At first a strictly spare-time avocation, but over the next three years he gradually gave more time to it until he sold his first story in December 1978 (“Ernie,” Analog, September 1979). In 1980 he left grad school and began writing full-time.
Since then he has published sixty-five novels, over a hundred short stories and novelettes, and five collections of short fiction. Best known for his sixteen Star Wars novels, he is also the author of the Quadrail series, the Cobra series, the Conquerors trilogy, the Sibyl’s War trilogy, and the young-adult Dragonback series.