Yvonne Watterson Writing
Yvonne Watterson Writing

considering the lilies & lessons from the field ©

More About Yvonne

More About Yvonne

More about Yvonne

Yvonne Watterson is a Northern Irish-born writer and educator, now based near Guadalajara, Mexico. Her career in public education spans 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. Yvonne's writing life began in November 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 beyond this blog in The Irish Times, Irish Central, Reading Ireland, and other outlets. Yvonne's 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. Most recently, 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, a six-piece Americana ensemble based in Ajijic, Mexico and she plays violin in the Lake Chapala Community Orchestra. Her daughter, Sophie, also a writer, lives in Arizona. “If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.” ― Seamus Heaney

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. Most recently, 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 and she plays violin in the Lake Chapala Community Orchestra. Her daughter, Sophie, is also a writer, living in Arizona.

  • Actors,  Art,  Children's Books,  Gary Shteyngart,  HBO,  James Gandolfini,  Maurice Sendak,  Memoir,  Soundtracks of our Lives,  television,  The Sopranos,  Themes of Childhood,  Where The Wild Things Are

    james gandolfini with the wild things now

    June 23, 2013 / 5 Comments

    The only non-book on my bookshelves is the Sopranos DVD collection. Apropos that it sits among some of the most compelling stories ever told because, as Gary Shteyngart says, The Sopranos is “storytelling for the new century.” And, a good story lasts forever. Every night at 8PM my husband asks me, “So are you ready for Tony and the boys?” and we…

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    Editor
  • and What I Wore,  Art,  Awesome Women,  Carly Simon,  Cat Stevens,  Culture of breast cancer,  Facebook,  Memoir,  Memoir,  Mother Daughter Relationship,  Nora Ephron,  Soundtracks of our Lives,  Theater,  Writers

    what I wore, a mountain of life & missing Nora Ephron . . .

    June 5, 2013 / 18 Comments

    Last night, my best friend and I went to see the enchanting and poignant Love, Loss, and What I Wore, Nora and Delia Ephron‘s stage-adaptation of Ilene Beckerman’s book by the same name. Like each of the five women on stage, I can peer into my wardrobe and hang on the clothes and shoes and handbags bulging from it, some…

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    Editor
  • Memoir,  Mother Daughter Relationship,  Mother's Day,  Ordinary Things,  Poetry,  Seamus Heaney,  Themes of Childhood

    seamus heaney & a dance for mother’s day

    May 12, 2013 / 9 Comments

    This Mother’s Day in America finds me thinking about my mother back in Castledawson, County Derry, a great armful of sheets rescued from the clothes-line before the rain begins to fall. Then, the folding, a precise ritual, my father her partner in a dance handed down from one generation to the next. My daughter learned those same moves not by the…

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  • Arizona,  Artisans,  Crafts,  Fosterling,  Lewis Hyde,  Memoir,  Memoir,  Mother's Day,  Ordinary Things,  Phoenix,  Seamus Heaney,  Writing

    little marvels on mother’s day in america . . .

    May 5, 2013 / 18 Comments

    In a special for CNBC, Anna Andrianova shares the National Retail Federation’s estimate that $20.7 billion will be spent next Sunday, Mother’s Day in America. How easily that number rolls off the tongue – twenty-point-seven-billion-dollars – but what does it mean? A lot, of course. Years ago, I told my students to avoid using “a lot” in their compositions, because it was too…

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