Sonya Hartnett
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Sonya Hartnett (born 23 February 1968 in Melbourne) is an Australian author. She writes fiction variously for children, young adults and adults and has won numerous prizes and awards, having been described as "the finest Australian writer of her generation"[1]. She wrote her first novel at age 13 and had her first book, Trouble All The Way, published when she was 15. Her books have also been published in Europe and North America.
Although she is often classified as a writer of young adult fiction, Hartnett does not consider this label entirely accurate: "I’ve been perceived as a young adult writer whereas my books have never really been young adult novels in the sort of classic sense of the idea".[2]
In 2006 she was involved with some controversy regarding the publication of Landscape with Animals, published under the pseudonym Cameron S. Redfern. The book contains many sex scenes and Hartnett was almost immediately "outed" as the author. She said that she wanted to avoid the book being accidentally shelved with her work for children in libraries, and denied that she used a pseudonym to evade responsibility for the work or as a publicity stunt ala Nikki Gemmell's The Bride Stripped Bare.[3] The book was savaged in a The Age review by Peter Craven[1], who described it as an "overblown little sex shocker", a "tawdry little crotch tickler" and lamented that Hartnett was "too good a writer to put her name to this indigestible hairball of spunk and spite". It was defended vigorously by The Australian 's Marion Halligan ("I haven't read many books by Hartnett, but I think this is a much more amazing piece of writing than any of them") who chastised Craven for missing the joke ("How could an experienced critic get that so wrong?") and wonders why female authors writing frankly about sex is so frowned upon. [4]
Hartnett's works to date are:
- Trouble All The Way (1984)
- Sparkle and Nightflower (1986)
- The Glass House (1990)
- Wilful Blue (young adult, 1994)
- produced as a play and performed at the Victorian Arts Centre
- winner of the 1996 IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Ena Noel Award
- Sleeping Dogs (young adult, 1995)
- winner of the 1996 Miles Franklin Kathleen Mitchell Award (Australia)
- shortlisted for the 1996 New South Wales State Literary Award
- winner of the 1996 Victorian Premier's Literary Award Sheaffer Pen Prize
- Black Foxes (1996)
- The Devil Latch (1996)
- Princes (1997)
- All My Dangerous Friends (young adult, 1998)
- shortlisted for the 1999 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award: Older Readers
- Stripes Of The Sidestep Wolf (1999) (first published in the UK in 2004)
- shortlisted for the 2002 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award: Older Readers
- Thursday's Child (young adult, 2000)
- winner of the 2002 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize
- winner of the 2000 Aurealis Award for Best Novel in Young Adult Division
- shortlisted for the 2000 Australian Publishers Association Award
- shortlisted for the 2001 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award: Older Readers
- shortlisted for the 2001 New South Wales State Literary Award
- shortlisted for the 2002 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
- Forest (2001)
- winner of the 2002 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year (Older Readers)
- Of A Boy (adult, 2002) (Australian title - published in the UK as What the Birds See in 2003)
- winner of the 2003 The Age Book of the Year
- winner of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book)
- shortlisted for the 2003 Miles Franklin Award
- shortlisted for the 2003 New South Wales State Literary Award
- The Silver Donkey (children, 2004)
- winner of the 2005 Courier Mail award for young readers
- winner of the 2005 CBC Book of the Year (Young readers)
- Surrender (adult, 2005):
- shortlisted for the 2005 The Age Book of the Year Award
- shortlisted for the 2005 Aurealis Award - Fantasy Division
- shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book)
- Landscape with Animals (adult, 2006, as Cameron S. Redfern)
She also co-authored There Must Be Lions: Stories about Mental Illness (1998) with Nick Earls and Heide Seaman.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Peter Crave, Landscape with Animals review, The Age, May 20, 2006
- ^ Achuka.co.uk interview, 2002
- ^ Sonya Hartnett, "Faking It", The Age, May 28, 2006
- ^ Marion Halligan, "Sex and the singular woman", The Australian, June 24, 2006
