2019 Cosplay Guest of Honor

We're excited to announce our Cosplay Guest of Honor for Gen Con 2019: Yaya Han! She will serve as one of our Costume Contest judges and conduct several panels about cosplay at this year's convention. Check out the Event Catalog for details about specific events! Yaya will also be selling items at her booth in the Entertainer Spotlight section of the Exhibit Hall.

About Yaya Han:

Yaya Han is a costume designer, model, and cosplay entertainer based in Atlanta, GA. She discovered the unique creative pastime of cosplay at Anime Expo in 1999 as a young fan, with no prior training in sewing or crafting. However, Yaya has always been artistic, especially with pen and ink illustrations, so she quickly absorbed the heart and soul of costume making. Yaya is completely self-taught, mostly due to lack of funds and resources to enroll in classes for fashion or costume design. At the beginning, she could only afford a used $40 sewing machine and a sewing book from a thrift store. Yaya credits persistence and repeated failure as her greatest teachers in costume creation. To this day, she has made close to 300 costumes in the genres of anime/manga, comic books, video games, sci-fi, and her own original designs.

Over the years, Yaya has built a successful business in the cosplay community, creating a popular cosplay accessories line available online and at conventions, as well as her line of Yaya Han Brand merchandise. Her intricate and lavish creations have won awards and acclaim nationwide, and she has been invited to appear as a Guest, Panelist, Judge, Performer, and Host at over 100 conventions and other events all over the world. Yaya's impact on the world of cosplay has been so great that she has been a Guest Judge on two seasons of TBS TV Network's "King of the Nerds" competition show, featured in a documentary about cosplay called "Cosplay! Crafting a Secret Identity," and starred in the Syfy (Space) TV Network docuseries "Heroes of Cosplay."

But no matter where cosplay has taken her professionally, Yaya strives to stay true to what got her into this field originally — fun and creativity.

Through hard work, unmatched passion, and infectious enthusiasm, Yaya has helped cosplay gain respect and integrity as an art form in the fandom world and art communities, and her decade-long campaign for creativity has helped raise cosplay to the standards we know today. Every day, Yaya continues to pave the path for the beloved art and lifestyle we know as Costume Play.

For more about Yaya Han, visit www.yayahan.com.