Sonya Hartnett
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Australian writer

Sonya Louise Hartnett (born March 23, 1968, in Melbourne)[1] is an Australian author of fiction for adults, young adults, and children. She has been called "the finest Australian writer of her generation".[2] For her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" Hartnett won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2008, the biggest prize in children's literature.[3][4]

She has published books as Sonya Hartnett, S. L. Hartnett, and Cameron S. Redfern.[5][6]

Personal life and education

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Hartnett was born March 23, 1968, in Melbourne, Australia to Philip Joseph and Virginia Mary Hartnett.[1] In 1988, she received a Bachelor of Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.[1]

Career

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Hartnett was thirteen years old when she wrote her first novel and fifteen when it was published for the adult market in Australia, Trouble All the Way (Adelaide: Rigby Publishers, 1984).[7][8] For years she has written about one novel annually.[6] 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." She believes the distinction is not so important in Britain as in her native land.[9]

According to the National Library of Australia, "The novel for which Hartnett has achieved the most critical (and controversial) acclaim was Sleeping Dogs".[5] The book, which involves incest between siblings, is "often critiqued as 'without hope'" but has "generated enormous discussion both within Australia and overseas."[5]

Many of Hartnett's books have been published in the UK and in North America. For Thursday's Child (2000; 2002 in the UK), she won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.[10][11] The novel was eligible for such award in 2002 because it was her first publication in the UK. In 2008 she won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award which is administered by the Swedish Arts Council.[12]

Landscape with Animals controversy

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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.[13] 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 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.[14]

Awards and honours

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In 2000 and 2003, The Sydney Morning Herald named Hartnett one of their Young Novelists of the Year.[15]

In 2008, Hartnett received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, which annually honours an author of children's books whose "a body of work known for its unflinching focus on the toughest aspects of life."[16]

In 2016, Shelf Awareness included Golden Boys on their list of the best teen novels of the year.[17]

Awards for Hartnett's writing Year Title Award Result Ref. 1996 Sleeping Dogs CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers Honour Kathleen Mitchell Award (Australia) Winner New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Shortlist Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Sheaffer Pen Prize Winner Willful Blue IBBY Ena Noel Award (1996) Winner 1999 Princes CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers Shortlist 2000 Thursday's Child Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel Winner [18] Australian Publishers Association Award Shortlist 2001 CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers Shortlist New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Shortlist 2002 Forest CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers Winner Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers Shortlist Thursday's Child Guardian Children's Fiction Prize Winner [10][11] Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Shortlist 2003 Of a Boy The Age Book of the Year Award Winner [19] Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book) Finalist [20] Miles Franklin Award Shortlist New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Shortlist 2005 The Silver Donkey Courier Mail Award for young readers Winner CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Younger Readers Winner Surrender The Age Book of the Year Award Shortlist Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel Shortlist [21] 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize (South East Asia and South Pacific Region, Best Book) Shortlist 2007 The Silver Donkey COOL Award Fiction for Years 7-9 Winner Surrender Michael L. Printz Award Honour [22] 2008 The Ghost's Child CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers Winner [23] 2010 Butterfly Miles Franklin Award Shortlist [24] The Midnight Zoo Aurealis Award for Best Young Adult Novel Finalist [25] The Silver Donkey Andersen Award (Italy) Best Book for readers 9–12 Winner [26][27] 2011 The Midnight Zoo CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers Winner [28] 2012 Come Down, Cat! CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Younger Readers Honour [29] Prime Minister's Literary Awards for Children's Fiction Finalist [30] The Midnight Zoo CILIP Carnegie Medal Shortlist [31] 2013 The Children of the King CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Younger Readers Winner [32] Prime Minister's Literary Awards Young Adult Fiction Shortlist [33] 2015 Golden Boys Christine Stead Prize for Fiction Shortlist Miles Franklin Award Shortlist [34] New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Shortlist Prime Minister's Literary Awards for Fiction Finalist Victorian Premier's Literary Awards Shortlist 2022 Blue Flower CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award: Picture Book Shortlist [35]

Bibliography

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Fiction

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Picture books

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The Boy and the Toy (2010)

Come Down, Cat! (2011)

Blue Flower (2021)

Junior fiction

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The Silver Donkey (2004)

Sadie and Ratz (2008)

The Children of the King (2012)

Teen and young adult fiction

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Wilful Blue (1994)

produced as a play and performed at the Victorian Arts Centre

Sleeping Dogs (1995)

The Devil Latch (1996)

Princes (1997)

All My Dangerous Friends (1998)

Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf (1999) (published in the UK in 2004)

Thursday's Child (2000) (published in the UK in 2002)

Forest (2001)

Surrender (2005)

The Ghost's Child (2007)

Butterfly (2009)

The Midnight Zoo (2010)

Adult fiction

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Trouble All the Way (1984)

Sparkle and Nightflower (1986)

The Glass House (1990)

Black Foxes (1996)

Earls, Nick; Sonya Hartnett; Heide Seaman (1998). There must be lions : stories about mental illness. Charnwood, A.C.T.: Ginninderra Press.

Of a Boy (adult, 2002) (first published in the UK as What the Birds See in 2003)

Landscape with Animals (2006), as by Cameron S. Redfern

Golden Boys (2014)

Memoirs

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Life in Ten Houses: A Memoir (2013)

Critical studies and reviews of Hartnett's work

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Case, Jo (September 2014). "Bearing witness". Australian Book Review. 364: 13. Review of Golden Boys

See also

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References

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