Awards
Children's Literature
Soft Shoulders won first prize in a national competition from The Writer's Voice of Silver Bay, judged by author Katherine Paterson. Liza Frenette was chosen as the 2006 "William Kennedy Young Author of the Year" by P.S. 19 in Albany, New York.
Feature & News Writing
Other Honors
Soft Shoulders won first prize in a national competition from The Writer's Voice of Silver Bay, judged by author Katherine Paterson. Liza Frenette was chosen as the 2006 "William Kennedy Young Author of the Year" by P.S. 19 in Albany, New York.
Feature & News Writing
- United Press International - first place for feature writing
- United Press International - first place for business reporting
- Associated Press - first place for column writing
- New York State Publishers Association - first place for local reporting
- International Labor Communications Association: 2012 first place blog writing award for a story about slain civil rights activist Andrew Goodman, who was killed in 1964 while trying to register black voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer. Goodman, who was only 20, was a lifelong summer resident of Tupper Lake, my hometown. Bill Frenette,my deceased uncle, and Jim Frenette, my father, were instrumental in getting a mountain in Tupper Lake named Goodman Mountain in honor of Andrew.
Other Honors
- Liza is a faculty member of the New York State Summer Young Writers Institute, which is held every summer at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. It is open to high school writers from across the USA.
- Liza was the commencement speaker at Tupper Lake High School in 2004.
- Liza Frenette has been honored with the Mary Heaton Vorse award four times. It is the top writing award from the Metro Labor Communications Council in New York City, honoring skill in humanitarian writing. The first award was for a centerspread article she wrote in "NYSUT Unitedr" news magazine about a school librarian, Angela Page, who became gravely ill from constant exposure to water leaks and mold in the Liberty, NY school library. Page developed multiple chemical sensitivity and had to live alone, without her children or longtime partner, in a barren room with a cot to avoid exposure to any more chemicals. She was later fired by the school board. She also won for articles about a school project in South Jefferson where students and faculty made beds in a shop class for students who had no beds to sleep on at home. A third feature story which won was about a retired teacher who has lived 21 years with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, and has raised more than $4 million for research into a cure. Christopher Pendergast, of Long Island, also has a clinic named for him at SUNY Stony Brook where people with ALS can go for treatment.
- Mary Heaton Vorse was a feminist, activist, journalist and novelist. She also helped create the well-known Provincetown Players theater group in Provincetown, Ma., an area of Cape Cod regularly visited by Liza, and one that she is currently writing about!
- The Christopher Pendergast article also won a national first place writing award from the American Federation of Teachers.