Sonya Hartnett

Sonya Hartnett (born 23 March 1968 in Box Hill, Victoria) is an Australian author of fiction for adults, young adults, and children. She has been called "the finest Australian writer of her generation". 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.

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 was thirteen years old when she wrote her first novel and fifteen when it was published —for the adult market— Trouble All the Way (1984).

According to the National Library of Australia, "The novel for which Hartnett has achieved the most critical (and controversial) acclaim was Sleeping Dogs" (1995). "A book involving incest between brother and sister and often critiqued as 'without hope', Sleeping Dogs generated enormous discussion both within Australia and overseas."

Many of Hartnett's books have been published in the U.K. and in North America. For Thursday's Child (2000, UK 2002), 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.