Nine Girls

About the Author

Stacy Gregg (Ngati Mahuta/Ngati Pukeko/Ngati Maru) grew up in Ngaruawahia, the small but culturally significant town where Nine Girls, her multiple-award-winning children's novel, is set. Stacy's first book with Penguin Random House UK/NZ, Nine Girls takes place in the socially tumultuous late seventies and early eighties in New Zealand and won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award and the Esther Glen Award for Junior Fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults 2024. It is written for a readership of 10 -13 years but holds just as much appeal for adult audiences, exploring similar themes to her 2022 essay published in The Spinoff, 'The Maoris From the Town Side of the River', which won a New Zealand Voyager Journalism Award in 2023. Stacy has previously published 32 middle-grade fiction novels with HarperCollins UK and remains HarperCollins New Zealand's third best-selling children's author of all-time, after David Walliams and Dr Seuss. Her Pony Club Secrets series has sold over 1.5 million copies globally in English alone and later became the CBBC TV series Mystic, which ran for three seasons. Stacy's second series Pony Club Rivals continued to define and dominate pony genre fiction before she moved into stand-alone hardbacks. The first of these, The Princess and the Foal, released in 2013 and was based on the true-life story of Princess Haya of Jordan, written with the blessing of HRH. Stacy travelled to the royal palaces and stables of Jordan for research and since then has travelled to Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Russia and Iceland to research her novels. Before her winning sweep in the national book awards, Stacy has been eight times a finalist and a consecutive three-time winner of the Children's Choice Award. She has also twice won TV's WhatNow Children's Choice Award for middle-grade fiction. Stacy's other titles for younger readers include the junior fiction series, Spellbound Ponies, the picture books In or Out and The Easter Bunny Hunt for HarperCollins UK, and the popular Mini Whinny series for Scholastic. Her screenwriting credits include Mystic and the Acorn TV series, My Life Is Murder, starring Xena Warrior Princess's Lucy Lawless. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand.