About Liza
Liza Frenette is an avid swimmer who visits numerous lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks and the ocean every year from May to November. She loves to kayak, especially with her dog Topaz in the boat. She loves looking for great blue herons, turtles, amazing clouds, fish, and flora and fauna. She really likes going into the woods in fall and winter, especially, on skis or snowshoes or in boots.
She loves flowers and gardening (although not so much weeding!) and for decades had a print that said “The Earth Laughs in Flowers,” a quote by Emerson that she often repeated to her daughter. When her daughter Jasmine was little, they were driving by a field where only small flowers were growing, and her daughter said “Look, mom, the earth is just giggling.”
Next to Liza’s bed are stacks of books. There are bookcases in every room of her home. Every so often, she goes through them and donates books to an organization where she volunteers, Grassroots Givers, which provides books, clothing and household items to those in need, including many schools. She is fortunate to have grown up in a home where reading was valued. Although she didn’t particularly like her Saturday chore of dusting all the bookshelves, she did appreciate that her parents subscribed to book clubs and often waited for the mailman to bring the next book! She was a frequent visitor to the library, where her great aunt worked, and read stories and a lot of poetry.
Liza is the author of three books for chapter readers and one book for middle grade readers. Her first book, Soft Shoulders, won a national writing award from The Writer’s Voice judged by best-selling author Katherine Paterson, and was inspired by her daughter, who attended the award ceremony with her and read Paterson’s books.
The same characters appeared in her next two books, Dangerous Falls Ahead and Dead End, all published by North Country Books. Her most recent book, a middle grade novel, is titled Detour Ahead, and is published by North Country Books/Globe Pequot Publishing. All of her books are set in the Adirondack Mountains, where she grew up in a family of nine children, all of them active in the outdoors, and all readers, thanks to her parents, James and Susanne Frenette.
Her entire career has been in the field of writing – although she did work two summers as a waitress, one summer in a grocery store, and one summer as a chambermaid during her teen years and college breaks.
She earned an A.A.S. degree in journalism from the State University of New York at Morrisville, and later went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in English with a journalism minor from University at Albany, and a master’s degree in English in the creative writing program from UAlbany.
Liza worked as a reporter and photographer for the Tupper Lake Press, Adirondack Daily Enterprise, and Press-Republican, where she was also a columnist. She won awards from United Press International and the Associated Press for feature writing, news writing, and column writing.
She went on to work as a writer for United University Professions, the nation’s largest public higher education union, and New York State United Teachers, covering issues in public schools, colleges and hospitals throughout the state as a magazine and online associate editor. She won state, national and international writing awards.
She also worked as a faculty editor for 20 years for the New York State Young Writers Summer Institute, where she loved working with high school students from across the country.
Liza continues to take writing classes and workshops for her own professional development and interest. She also teaches her own writing workshops.
Dedication
All of my work is dedicated to my daughter, Jasmine.
She inspired me to tell stories to her as a young child. I made up stories for her, and often told the same ones over upon request. Our stories included Jack and the Snowman, the Night I Ate Cold Spaghetti, and Butterflina- the fairy who lived in the little magical brass tree we owned. At bath time, the edge of the tub and the shower curtain became a stage where her toys became characters performing.
I still remember the thrill of sitting next to her on the couch when she first began sounding out words on her own. How she smiled!
I read to her each night when she was a child. We listened to The Velveteen Rabbit album over and over and over, narrated by Meryl Streep with piano music by George Winston. How we loved that story about love, and becoming real.
I bought her many books, as did my mother, and we read about frogs and toads and badgers and dogs and make-believe lands and orphans and dolls and all of it.
Then she began reading on her own, and even from a young age she was an avid reader and would read for hours. I’d tell her to take breaks to rest her eyes. When we traveled, we would go together to pick out a book on tape to listen to in the car on our trips. When she got older, we would sometimes read the same book, and we shared a love of many authors. Several times we read a book at the same time- she would read it after school, mark her page, and I would read it at night. It was always hard to get a book out of her hands.
When she entered high school, she ranked in the top three percent in the country for reading comprehension.
When she was six years old, I was driving to New York City and we spun off the road in a snowstorm. I panicked and looked into the back seat. She was reading a book, unfazed.
My first book, “Soft Shoulders,” was inspired by her character and by raising her as a single parent. At that time, there were few children’s books featuring single parents. Although I raised her alone, I wanted to show that in some families, both parents could still be involved in raising a child even when a marriage doesn’t work out, although that was not the case for us. It was just the two of us. The book is fiction, and set in the Adirondacks, where I grew up and where she lived until she was seven years old. I wrote a first draft of the book for a national competition sponsored by The Writer’s Voice, and it won first place! We were at home when the phone call came, and Jasmine answered the phone. She came into the living room, stunned, saying “Mom, Katherine Paterson is on the phone…?” Yes, that Katherine Paterson. My daughter and I had read and loved “Bridge to Terabithia,” which won the Newberry Medal in 1978, as did “Jacob Have I Loved” in 1981, and other books of hers. I hadn’t known when I entered the contest, but Katherine was the judge! When Katherine told me on the phone that day that I had won first place, Jasmine and I got up on the couch after I hung up, and whooped and jumped. Jasmine came with me to the awards ceremony, and it was a thrill for both of us to meet her. Of course, Katherine signed our books.
