According to Genevieve of the Australian litblog You Cried For Night, Sonya Hartnett "is slowly receiving the attention she deserves in Australia and Britain, but should be more widely known as time goes by. In general all her titles are worth a look. She tends to be dismissed by some as a dark, Gothic writer for young adults, but should not be as she is a gifted storyteller, often producing tales of misfits or outcasts in spare, powerful prose that nobody should miss."
I found this paragraph in a Guardian profile of her interesting: "Hartnett classifies her books as fitting into the American Southern gothic tradition. The influences of Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck are all evident, and Flute's sharply observed narrative in Thursday's Child is reminiscent of Frankie's in Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding. But her books are also firmly in the tradition of great Australian fiction such as Jill Ker Conway's The Road to Coorain and AB Facey's A Fortunate Life, stories where families or individuals struggle against the extremes of nature."
More about Sonya Hartnett
+ Profile and bibliography at Penguin Books
+ A great list of her favorite books
+ Listing at Contemporary Writers in the UK
+ ACHUKA interview with Hartnett