On Wednesday 5 August 2026, all senior students at Sancta Maria College had the chance to meet Stacy Gregg, a New Zealand author whose book,“Nine Girls”, had won the Margaret Mahy Book of the Year Award at the 2024 New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults.
At the beginning of her visit, Stacy Gregg introduced her book “Nine Girls” to us. The book was set in Ngāruawāhia which is where she grew up. To help us remember this, she taught us an acronym – Nine girls are running under a wharf and here I am. She asked for a few people to volunteer to go up, and she gave them all one word from this acronym; they then had to yell out their word in order. After this activity, Stacy Gregg got two students from the crowd to come up to the front and battle each other as Vikings. This allowed us to understand how life was when Vikings were around, which is important since the story is set in the Viking ages. The two students were given wigs and fake swords and shields and tried to push each other out of the circle. Before they fought the Vikings had to say,“You are no man” and “I’m more of a man than you” to one another to get into the act.
Next, with a presentation, Stacy Gregg had captivated students with many stories behind another of her famous works. She had surprised us with stories about meeting a Princess from Jordan. Princess Haya Bint Hussein of Jordan granted her special access to research of her childhood, the harsh times of loss, and joy of finding passion within equestrianism. Stacy Gregg had stated how this had led to her illustrating horse adventure books.
Stacy Gregg had presented a novel inspired by her late cat where Pusskin (the main character) went through many battles of hardship to finally meet the villain of the story, having to fight alongside his peers to defeat an evil cat lady. Furthermore, she had selected a handful of volunteers to act out the scene as to where Pusskin and his friends get on the island to fight the villain, creating an immersive environment for the students. They were all given costumes, and each had their respective voice lines, doing an amazing job at each of their individual parts.
After Stacy’s presentation to the senior students, special writing workshops were held for selected senior students during periods 2 and 3, providing a professional perspective and advice on writing. During these workshops, she developed and enhanced students’ writing skills. For example, in Year 11 and 12 workshop during period 2, she used various activities, both individual and group based, to explore methods of description utilised in descriptive writing. Students were tasked with choosing an animal, then writing a descriptive paragraph without saying the animal’s name. Based on that paragraph, other groups would attempt to guess your chosen animal. This activity showed the importance of word choice in descriptive pieces for the audience to understand an idea. By the end of the workshops, students left feeling more confident about writing with their newly developed and enhanced skills.
Overall, Stacy Gregg was a wonderful guest at Sancta Maria College; our senior students learnt several tips and techniques to develop their English skills. Thank you to Stacy Gregg for coming to Sancta Maria College to talk to us, and to the teachers who organised it. This was an incredibly immersive experience, and every student had something to take with them for the future.
