Gretchen's poetry has been published in journals including The Chattahoochee Review, Pacific Coast Journal, Northeast Corridor, Inkwell, Pudding Magazine, Upstreet, Canada's lichen, and online at Poetry Southeast, SeaStories, and A Prairie Home Companion. 

Gretchen won the Poetry Society of America's Bright Lights/Big Verse competition and was projected on the Jumbotron while reading her winning poem in Times Square. She was also twice awarded the Grand Prize in San Francisco's Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Festival, selected as a finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, awarded first honorable mention in Canada's lichen literary journal Serial Poet competition, and named a Juried Poet at the Houston Poetry Fest. 

Her poems have also been anthologized in Robert McDowell's Poetry as Spiritual Practice, Gival Press’s Poetic Voices Without Borders, Ghost Road Press’s Open Windows, Sincerely Elvis, You Are Here: New York Streets in Poetry, Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems About Marriage and Capital BookFest’s Family Pictures, Poems and Photographs Celebrating Our Loved Ones. Her poem, "The Sand Women," was choreographed and performed by dance companies in Palm Beach and San Francisco, and others appear in datebooks published in Chicago by Woman Made Gallery. 

Her chapbooks, That Severed Cord and The Scent of Oranges: poems from the tropics were published by Finishing Line Press. 

Gretchen leads poetry and creative nonfiction workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress.