Nylda Dieppa

Alborada (Dawn): A Cross-Cultural Memoir in Poetry (May 2023)
Otra Alborada: Wisdom Emerges With the New Dawn (TBD)

Poetry

Nylda Dieppa is a speaker, author, facilitator, translator, and LBGTQ+ supporter and ally enjoying life in Orlando, Florida. She has a Masters in Pastoral Studies from Loyola University, New Orleans as well as a degree in Fashion Design and postgraduate work towards a Ph.D. in Intercultural Theology. A dedicated homemaker for thirty-eight years, Nylda has five children and six grandchildren.

A “professional volunteer” most of her life, Nylda did pro bono work for the Diocese of Orlando, Florida and participated in medical and leadership development mission trips to the Dominican Republic. The past leader of the Maitland Writers Group, an affiliate of the Florida Writers Association, she currently sustains the group by editing and publishing the MSG Newsletter. Nylda’s work has been circulated in various publications including Cadence, “America” magazine, and “The Florida Catholic.”

She has read her poetry at various venues including the 9th and 10th Annual Winter Park Paint Outs at the Polasek Museum in Winter Park, Florida, at Medgar Evers College, The Ear Club, Cornelia Street Cafe in New York City, and in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She was a regular contributor to the “Artist Spotlight” column of the College Park Community Newspaper.

Nylda was a catalyst, featured participant, and collaborator in the development of the award-winning documentary film Memories of a Penitent Heart, a sensitive and poetic exposition of how faith is utilized and distorted in inconvenient situations, and an illuminating story about the family conflicts created by the AIDS epidemic that remain unresolved through generations. She translated from Spanish Maritza Pratt’s inspirational book To Survive! and serves on the board of the Florida Writers Foundation.

Nylda is the author of Alborada: A Poetic Memoir Across Cultures, an autobiographical collection of narrative and lyrical poems crafted throughout her life. It won a Royal Palms Award from the Florida Writers Association in 2015 and a 2016 International Latino Book Award for its cover illustration inspired by Nylda’s original pastel drawing. A second, enhanced edition titled Alborada: A Cross-Cultural Memoir in Poetry is coming out on May 3, 2023.

These days Nylda is working on a second book of poetry, Otra Alborada: Wisdom Emerges with the New Dawn, and struggles with the idea of finishing or rewriting Amada, her 60,000-word fictionalized memoir of her mother's life in Puerto Rico and Florida and/or working on Saligia, the story of her kidnapped and murdered brother. Or perhaps something a bit less difficult to contemplate!

You may contact Nylda or her cute mini Goldendoodle, Nela, at nyldad@gmail.com, and listen to her Story Corps interview here. Or learn more at nyldadieppa.com and sign up for her newsletter, “Word Sketches,” here.

Alborada (Dawn): A Cross-Cultural Memoir in Poetry

May 2023

In Alborada (Dawn): A Cross-Cultural Memoir in Poetry, Nylda Dieppa sketches the formative and transformative experiences of her lifetime—from childhood on the
island of Puerto Rico through maturity in the continental United States—as paralleled by the sun’s passage through the times of the day. This enhanced, newly retitled
edition of Dieppa’s award-winning Alborada: A Poetic Memoir Across Cultures adds fourteen new and ten revised poems to inspire the joys of spiritual and emotional
healing.

From the dawning innocence of a girl’s first crush alongside the rise of a young woman’s longing to belong and be loved, Dieppa shines daylight on the anguish and
delights of both growing up and parenting at every age. Her lyrical and narrative poems highlight the shadows cast by culture shock, and they reveal the encroaching
darkness of sorrow and betrayal as the sun sets on a thirty-eight-year marriage. Yet Alborada also illuminates the wonder of deliverance from midnight’s despair to the
hope and wholeness of a new day’s dawn.