Carlsbad author joins elite ‘Star Wars’ crew

As a little girl, Kiersten White watched “Star Wars” movies over and over, anxiously awaiting a Princess Leia or monster moment.

In junior high school, she wrote in her diary on Valentine’s Day that she didn’t have a romance in her life, but the re-release of “Star Wars” was in theaters, and that was far better.

She grew up nurturing a passion to become a writer and storyteller from first grade on.

White had no idea that one day she would get to write the story of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s young life and his training as a Padawan — a story for the “Star Wars” universe that she would be asked to create in her imagination.

When the writing request from Disney’s Star Wars division came, she called it the “writing honor of a lifetime.”

“So much of my storyteller DNA was shaped by a galaxy far, far away, and now I get to live there, and I honestly still can’t believe it and probably never will,” she posted on Twitter.

The official announcement appeared on the StarWars.com website on Oct. 7: four new books featuring never-before-told tales from across the “Star Wars” saga would be published in 2022.

One is White’s young adult novel, “Star Wars: Padawan,” depicting ObiWan in his early days as a student-apprentice of QuiGon Jinn, to be published next July.

White, a Carlsbad resident and mother of three, already had become a New York Times bestselling author of young adult fantasy and paranormalthemed novels and appeared regularly on ComicCon panels.

She had offered her writing skills to the Star Wars folks 3 1⁄2 years ago. “I’ve always loved Star Wars. Pick me,” she recalls pleading.

But she had moved on her novel journey with no idea the seed she had planted still was germinating — until she was contacted last June, that is.

“I could never have imagined they’d give me ObiWan. I never even considered him a possibility. I freaked out.”

She ran up her stairs screaming. But White couldn’t tell anyone what she was screaming about. She was sworn to secrecy until the official announcement four months later.

It’s not like she didn’t have a lot of great projects in the works. White’s book, “The Excalibur Curse,” her conclusion to a fantasy trilogy featuring a powerfully reimagined version of Camelot’s Guinevere, is due to be released by Delacorte Press in December.

She excitedly awaits publication next May of her first adult novel, “Hide,” a hide-and-seek horror story set in an abandoned amusement park. Plus, she is launching a book series aimed at kids ages 8 to 12:

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