Stephen J. Sansweet

Stephen J. Sansweet was born and educated in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. He studied at Temple University from 1962 to 1966, receiving a degree in journalism.

In early 1969 Sansweet became a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. After working in the Journal's Philadelphia and Montreal bureaus, Sansweet was transferred to Los Angeles, where he covered the gaming industry, aerospace, banking, and Hollywood. He became the Journal's Los Angeles deputy bureau chief in 1984 and was promoted to bureau chief in 1987, a position he held until 1996 when he became Director of Specialty Marketing at Lucasfilm Ltd. His title later changed to Director of Content Management and Head of Fan Relations. Sansweet left Lucasfilm fulltime in April, 2011, and is currently a consultant with the title Fan Relations Advisor.

Sansweet appeared as co-host on more than 50 hours of Star Wars collectibles programming on QVC, a U.S. shopping network, in the last half of the 1990s, and he is the owner of the world's largest private collection of Star Wars memorabilia, housed in a 7,500-square-foot (697 m2) private museum—a converted chicken barn—adjacent to his home in Petaluma, California. Though not open to the public, Rancho Obi-Wan has been visited by hundreds of invited fans and collectors from around the world.

Not abandoning his love of writing, Sansweet has sixteen books to his credit, fourteen of them on Star Wars, including "The Star Wars Vault", "the 1.2 million-word Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia" and "Star Wars: 1,000 Collectibles - Memorabilia and Stories from a Galaxy Far, Far Away". In addition to being the saga's biggest collector, Sansweet is a recognized authority on all things Star Wars, from the making and marketing of the movies and spin-offs, to the activities of fans worldwide. He has also served as a columnist for official Star Wars magazines.
Sansweet helped build the first editorial team that created StarWars.com, the official source of Star Wars news and developments for online fans.

Since 1999, he has played an integral role in the launching of Star Wars Celebrations—the official fan conventions that attract tens of thousands of enthusiasts from around the globe, and in this capacity, he has served as stage host and panelist. Sansweet is also a proud member of the 501st Legion, a worldwide grassroots fan costuming and service organization.

Steve Sansweet is part of the Friends de ScienceFictionArchives.com and thus supports our mission to preserve iconic Sci-Fi items.

Writer: PG