Thursday, January 23, 2014

Best-selling New Zealand children’s author invited to Beirut for TV interview


 It’s not every day a New Zealand author is invited to Lebanon for a television appearance, but bestselling children’s author Stacy Gregg, (left - Carolyn Haslett), will be travelling to Beirut next week for an interview on the widely broadcast MBC television talk show ‘Kalam Nawaem’. 

‘Kalam Nawaem’ is based on the format of the top US show 'The View'.  It is one of the top ten shows in the Arabic world and is broadcast throughout the Middle East and in the United States.

The interview will focus on Gregg’s latest novel for children, The Princess and the Foal which was published internationally in November 2013 and became a bestseller over the Christmas period.

The Princess and the Foal is a fictionalised account of HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein’s childhood in Jordan after her mother Queen Alia dies in a helicopter crash. On her sixth birthday her father gifts her an orphan foal and so begins an epic tale culminating in Princess Haya defying convention to ride in the toughest equestrian competition in Arabia – The King’s Cup.

HRH Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein went on to become an Olympic show jumper and flag bearer for Jordan, and is currently the head of the international governing equestrian body, the FEI.

Stacy Gregg’s books in the Pony Club Secrets and Pony Club Rivals series have sold in excess of a million copies worldwide. For The Princess and the Foal Stacy undertook extensive research, travelling to Dubai to get the blessing of Her Royal Highness before embarking on the book.  On another trip to Jordan, Stacy visited the stables and other sites that shaped Princess Haya’s childhood, and interviewed long-time friends and acquaintances.

Gregg says the story of Princess Haya was a story she personally felt a strong relationship with since her own mother had died when she was young.

There has been a huge international response to The Princess and the Foal with rights sold in UK, USA, Commonwealth, France, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, the Arab countries and China.


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