Yvonne Watterson
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Yvonne Watterson

considering the lilies ©

More About Yvonne

More About Yvonne

More about Yvonne

Yvonne Watterson is a Northern Irish-born writer now living in Mexico. Her work has appeared in The Irish Times, Irish Central, Reading Ireland, and elsewhere. Yvonne's essays begin in all sorts of places - a song, a story, a ballpark, a polling place, a graveyard - but they return to the same complicated business of belonging to more than one place - what makes a place, a person, or a moment feel like home.

About Yvonne

From there to here . . . Yvonne Watterson is a Northern Irish-born writer and educator, now based near Guadalajara, Mexico. Her career in public education spans nearly 30 years, during which she led school reform initiatives featured in national outlets including The New York Times and Education Week. Her work as a high school principal in Arizona focused on equity, inclusion, and student advocacy, earning both local and national attention. Her writing life began in 2011, after an invasive breast cancer diagnosis sent her searching for answers online. What began as survival grew into a practice of storytelling, with her work appearing in The Irish Times, Irish Central, Reading Ireland, and other outlets. Her essays and reflections explore themes ranging from The Troubles in Northern Ireland and the poetry of Seamus Heaney to personal experiences of illness, loss, and resilience after being widowed in 2013. She compiled and edited Documented Dreams, a bilingual collection of letters documenting her advocacy with young immigrant students, and she contributed to Bravados: An Anthology, featuring 21 personal narratives by expats living in the Lake Chapala region. In 2025, she collaborated with Stephen Travers on The Bass Player – Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre. Yvonne’s social justice advocacy has earned her numerous honors, including the City of Phoenix Martin Luther King “Living the Dream” Award and the YWCA Tribute to Women Social Justice Leader Award. She is also a musician, performing with her partner, Scott Henrich, in The Old Souls Band, an Americana ensemble based in Ajijic, Mexico.

  • 9/11,  Anything can Happen,  Billy Collins,  Healing Field Tempe,  Memoir,  Remembering September 11th,  Seamus Heaney,  Terrorism,  Themes of childhood

    In the Bluest Sky

    September 11, 2024 / No Comments

    In the parlance of aviation, a "severe clear" sky, so intensely blue with seemingly unlimited visibility and air so pure, it can blind a pilot.  

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    Editor
  • Guns,  Police shootings,  Racism,  Sectarianism,  The Cure at Troy,  The Troubles

    has anybody seen my old friend, America?

    September 5, 2024 / No Comments

    I often feel guilty for having left my Northern Ireland. I wonder if perhaps the better thing or the best thing would have been to stay, to strive to see beyond the images that flickered on our television screen at six o’clock every night. But I didn’t stay. I fled. I turned my back on the vulnerable, tiny country that…

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    Editor
  • A Poem for Michael and Christopher,  Act Two,  Door into the Dark,  Postscript,  Seamus Heaney,  The Underground

    P.S. Thank you, Seamus

    August 30, 2024 / 1 Comment

    Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. And so, my fellow graduates, make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to…

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    Editor
  • Anahorish,  Dispatches from the Diaspora,  Joseph O'Connor,  Memoir

    a rainy day kind of woman

    September 29, 2023 / 1 Comment

    The other day a Facebook memory popped up to remind me that my actual memory just isn’t what it used to be. There I am in the boots i’ve owned since 1982, perched on a freeway wall with my camera focused on something in the distance. But what? Unable to let go of this – and another thing that I’ll…

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