Sonya Hartnett

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Sonya Hartnett
Born 23 February 1968 (1968-02-23) (age 40)
Box Hill, Victoria
Pen name Cameron S. Redfern
Occupation Author
Nationality Australian
Genres Fiction

Sonya Hartnett (born 23 February 1968[1] in Box Hill, Victoria) is an Australian author.

Sonya Hartnett 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".[2] She wrote her first novel, Trouble All the Way, at the age of thirteen and had it published when she was fifteen. 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".[3]

Hartnett's latest novel, The Ghost's Child, was released in Australia on 2 July 2007.

Hartnett won the 2008 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.[4]

Contents

[edit] Landscape with Animals controversy

In 2006, Hartnett 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 à la Nikki Gemmell's The Bride Stripped Bare.[5] In a review published in The Age, Peter Craven savaged the book describing 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".[2] It was defended vigorously in the The Australian by 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.[6]

[edit] Bibliography

  • 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
winner of the 1996 Miles Franklin Kathleen Mitchell Award (Australia)
shortlisted for the 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards
winner of the 1996 Victorian Premier's Literary Award Sheaffer Pen Prize
Honour Book - 1996 Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award: Older Readers
  • 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
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 Premier's Literary Awards
shortlisted for the 2002 Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
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 Premier's Literary Awards
winner of the 2005 Courier Mail award for young readers
winner of the 2005 CBC Book of the Year (Young readers)
Honour Award in 2007 for the Michael L. Printz Award
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)
  • The Ghost's Child (2007)
  • Sadie and Ratz (2008)

She also contributed to There Must Be Lions: Stories about Mental Illness (1998) with Nick Earls and Heide Seaman.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Hartnett, Sonya (a.k.a. Hartnett, S. L.). Austlit Agent Details. Retrieved on 2007-08-28.
  2. ^ a b Peter Craven, Landscape with Animals review, (The Age) 20 May 2006
  3. ^ Interview (Achuka.co.uk) 2002
  4. ^ Cassin, Ray (2008) "Hartnett wins top prize for children's literature". (smh.com.au). Retrieved on 2008-03-22.
  5. ^ Sonya Hartnett, Faking It, (The Age) 28 May 2006
  6. ^ Marion Halligan, Sex and the singular woman, (The Australian) 24 June 2006


Persondata
NAME Hartnett, Sonya
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cameron S. Redfern
SHORT DESCRIPTION Contemporary Australian author
DATE OF BIRTH 23 February 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Box Hill, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Languages