Andrea Dietrich Biography

Andrea Dietrich grew up in Iowa and now resides in Utah with a spouse and two cats. She has two grown children and six grandchildren. Having graduated BYU with a Spanish major/ESL minor, she has spent most of her adult life teaching. It wasn't until 2000 that she began writing in earnest and discovering her "niche" as a writer of lyrical poetry. The internet opened up a new world for her, and she has spent two decades now participating in poetry clubs, acting as a judge of poetry contests for various magazines, for the website Shadow Poetry, and for Poetry Soup. 

Ms. Dietrich has won numerous awards, as well as the title Poet of the Year 2008, from the Yahoo group, Poetry For Thought. In addition, she has won prizes from the magazines Lucidity, Bell's Letters, Art with Words, Poets at Work and SP Quill, the magazine for which she wrote grammar and poetry articles as well as movie reviews and for which she acted as poetry editor for the head editor Marie Summers for six years. Many of her poems appeared in Shadows Ink, a yearly published series of chapbooks of award winning poetry as well as in numerous other anthologies. Her short stories appeared in many issues of SP Quill and much of her poetry was published in eight chapbooks (no longer sold online). 

Since coming to Poetry Soup, Ms. Dietrich has been both contest sponsor and winner of numerous contests. In 2010, her poem "Cinder Girl" was first place winner of Soup's International contest (these contests are no longer held).  A song was created from her lyrics "Honeymoon Serenade" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDWxc4cpHDc) and two movies have been made featuring the poetry of Andrea Dietrich: "A Tale of Fire and Ice" (a 4 min. Z-Film Fest Project, 2014) and the full length movie "Six Days of Sistine" in which 20 poems of Ms. Dietrichs serve as the thoughts of two characters played by Jamie Campbell Bower and Elarica Johnson (directed by Richard J. Perry, 2019) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7710360/

A Missing Soup Feature I really hope comes back

Blog Posted by Andrea Dietrich: 6/21/2026 10:15:00 AM

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Hind Avatar
June 28, 2026 at 6:17 PM
I am sorry you're having problems. You do not deserve that. I hope everything will be fixed soon by the PoetrySoup team. Best,
Gasun Avatar
June 28, 2026 at 10:22 AM
I hope the pages will appear again my dear TPS. It's easier for me to direct my poet friends to go and read my old poems using those pages.
Etgen-Baker Avatar
June 22, 2026 at 3:54 PM
oh my.....wasn't aware
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:54 PM
I just now saw that I can go to a poet's other older poems. You click above on "next". I just miss when I could know how many pages back to go. It looks like now I would have to click next, next, next until I get to their last page
Richards Avatar
June 22, 2026 at 9:55 PM
Yes, it was more personal when we reciprocated by leaving comments at the poets' pages. But then again, we knew one another...
Dietrich Avatar
June 22, 2026 at 2:33 PM
I am just faster at my computer where I understand how to deal with copy/paste when I have too long messages, Suzette. Unlike you, I struggle with technical things even though I was forced to learn Canvas, Zoom and all sorts of stuff as a teacher before retiring. Anyway, that said, the reason I enjoy commenting to old poems is simple. I don't like the reply button. I prefer how Soup was in the old days when poets replied to each other at the person's poems. There are some friends of mine whose every page I have seen (even some with ten pages or more). So it's nice to know the numbers of those pages, but I can live with this "new way" we are now presented with. Everything keeps changing. I will always say I preferred how Soup was in 2010 when I first came here.
Richards Avatar
June 22, 2026 at 2:39 AM
Continued: It came to light when I referred back to older poems which I didn't like in my contests - I kept record of the N/As and my reasons for rejecting them. When the AI Checkers first came out, a large number of those now "missing" poems had checked positive for AI usage. That exercise put me in good stead lately.
Richards Avatar
June 22, 2026 at 2:06 AM
I am older than you - so less of the 'oldies' . We are still spritely in our thinking :) Chat later.
Dietrich Avatar
June 22, 2026 at 2:01 AM
I just put a long response here that didn't go through. Maybe tomorrow. Things are so difficult for oldies like me trying to do a website comment by phone!!
Richards Avatar
June 22, 2026 at 1:33 AM
I usually search my FAVed poems list or by topic/word. The results usually give me what I'm looking for. I can't think of an instance where I have looked for a poet's first poem posted. The only time in the past when older poems were of interest to me was when I compared poetic voices - poems posted before and after June 2023. BTW Have you noticed that many poets who enter contests have significant gaps in their poetry history? Yes, we are aware of illness, etc, but that does not explain this phenomenon.
Kitchin Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 4:16 PM
Andrea, I agree and it's scary that some members poems are gone.
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:46 PM
Thanks for understanding, Tania
Poetrysoup Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 2:25 PM
We have created a less database-intensive solution. You can now page to all of the poems in sets of 100.
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:52 PM
Ok, thanks. I see what you mean now. Did you just add that today?
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:46 PM
Would these be the sets of my own or of other poets? I cannot figure out how to see more than one page of my friends' poetry.
Godwin Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 1:22 PM
There are errors everywhere. Where there is normally a positive number indicating comments received, I keep getting a 0. That's fun. I cannot click on someone who has commented on my page or another's and go to that person's page. Sotto's contest results will not open. Management has to be aware of all this, but do they know where my poem went? (I do keep copies of all my writes, so it is not 'critically' lost.)
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:48 PM
I hope the other problems you mentioned get resolved. I noticed also how Sotto's list didn't open
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:44 PM
I am glad to hear you had a copy of your vanished poem, Caycay. I have never liked changes to this website. Personally I preferred how it was the first time I came here and they had community points.
Liguori Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 1:02 PM
<< shaking head >>
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:42 PM
Poor Glenn
Liguori Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 2:29 PM
What will Glenn think about all this?!?
Empress Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 1:13 PM
I will miss your other 59 glenn hughes tributes! :D
Empress Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 12:21 PM
Oh no, I just noticed too that I can only see page one of every poet ... none of the older poems are showing right now. Hope it gets sorted soon too...
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:42 PM
I hope so too, Sweetie
Radice Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 11:45 AM
Hi Andrea. At the moment only a poet's latest 50 poems are showing (for me anyway) on their main page. As Tom states the older poems for each poet do still exist under their own admin section. It may be possible therefore to search for an older poem from another poet via a search engine if you know the title or a few words of it. As for Cay Cay, her poem seems to have unfortunately vanished completely. Cheers - Gary
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:41 PM
Well. I can't remember my OWN poetry titles. So how would I recall titles of my poet friends? This is crazy
Richards Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 11:35 AM
Andrea, I don't think that the old poems were wiped. One of the Poems of the Week was posted as far back as 2008 (last poem posted by that poet was in 2019). Weird!
Richards Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 8:33 PM
TPS explained it best in their comment to their blog.
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:40 PM
I am not saying old poems vanished. I am saying that if I go to your many pages of poetry, I can only see page 1 and nothing else
Cunningham Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 10:29 AM
I'm hoping it does too Andrea, I think it might be a few day's before things settle down, they did say one or two things might not work. So hopefully its just that, I know if we go to our poems in our admin section all our poems are there so they haven't vanished. I hope no one has lost any. I always back mine up with the export poems feature on here, it just saves all your poems as a pdf or word document, it doesn't save pictures or comments though ,just the poems. Tom
Dietrich Avatar
June 21, 2026 at 6:38 PM
I think my poems are all there but I know for a fact that Caycay's disappeared because it was in my list of fav poems and now it is gone.

Previous Blogs

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Date Posted: 7/2/2026 12:00:00 AM
A Missing Soup Feature I really hope comes back
Date Posted: 6/21/2026 10:15:00 AM
Unbelievable: I messed up directions for my contest
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Date Posted: 5/30/2026 5:49:00 PM
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Date Posted: 12/23/2025 2:55:00 PM
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Date Posted: 12/23/2025 12:33:00 PM
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Date Posted: 11/8/2025 2:16:00 PM
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An Apology and Discussion on Poetry Forms
Date Posted: 8/17/2025 4:39:00 PM
Congrats to Winners of my Mid Summer Contest
Date Posted: 7/27/2025 10:41:00 PM
Need Advice on AI checkers/ Please don't enter my contests with AI
Date Posted: 7/25/2025 9:27:00 AM

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