Welcome!

Gwendolyn Soper is:
1 part writer
1 part soprano
formerly with Tanglewood Festival Chorus,
and Utah Chamber Artists;
1 opera role: Queen of the Night
1 part mother & grandmother
1 part-ner in marriage
1 part beekeeper in rural Utah
Too many parts?

Her Story

Gwendolyn Soper was born and raised Mormon in Salt Lake City, Utah. She is the daughter of an artist mother, and an orthopedic surgeon father who died by suicide when Gwendolyn was six years old. She began to retreat to the gully behind their home where she’d explore the mill creek and sit under scrub oak to ponder. Her poetic interior landscape began to take shape in those woods.

Soper is a Pushcart Prize Nominee for her poem “What’s With All These Foxes” published by New Ohio Review (Issue 33). She is a NORward Prize for Poetry finalist (New Ohio Review). Billy Collins, 2x U.S. Poet Laureate, long-listed one of her poem, “Ham Sandwich”, for the Fish Poetry Prize. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in New Ohio Review, Atticus Review, Plant-Human Quarterly, Subtropics, Nine Mile Press, The Hopper and elsewhere. This includes Stuck Up: a collaborative effort in Scotland, by Nuart Aberdeen, to create the world’s longest paste-up wall of poetry and art. A poster of her poem, “Cast Iron”, is on that wall.

Currently, she’s pursuing an MFA in Writing at Pacific University. She also serves on her local arts board as Director of Literary Efforts, where she organizes hybrid poetry events. At the annual Tell it Slant Festival she is one of several marathon readers and they perform the complete works of Emily Dickinson in five days.

In 2022 she led a poetry prompt at Swiss-based Pernessy Poets Workshop (run by Elizabeth Boquet) using Roger Robinson‘s poem, “A Portable Paradise”, as a template for writers to write their own poem. She anthologized the poems from that workshop into a free e-chapbook. Roger Robinson (winner of the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize for his book of the same title [Peepal Tree Press]), kindly provided the cover photo.

She is also founder & admin of a large global poetry society for fans of Billy Collins.

She is a beekeeper and aspiring pomologist on a small orchard in rural Utah along with her husband. They also maintain a certified Monarch butterfly way-station on land that they inhabit on the unceded land of the Núuchiu (meaning, The People), and encourage others to learn about Utah’s Indigenous community. Her greatest joy is being with her three grown children and grandchildren. Gwendolyn also works at raising hens, alpacas and mental health awareness.