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.

  • Anahorish,  Anahorish,  Antrim,  Arizona,  Bellaghy,  Borders,  British Army,  Broagh,  Castledawson,  Dennis O'Driscoll,  Fosterling,  From the Republic of Conscience,  grandmother,  IRA,  Language matters,  Loss,  Love,  Memoir,  Memoir,  Memory,  Mother Daughter Relationship,  Northern Ireland,  Northern Ireland Culture,  Ordinary Things,  Personal Helicon,  Poetry,  Politics,  Sectarianism,  The Good Friday Agreement,  The Peace Process,  The Troubles,  Tony Parker,  Writing

    back to Anahorish ~ Seamus Heaney’s ‘first hill in the world’

    August 31, 2013 / 46 Comments

    Our poet, Seamus Heaney, will be buried in Bellaghy tomorrow evening, his body brought home from Dublin to rest next to the grave of his little brother, Christopher, whom many of us know from “Mid-Term Break,” a poem now learned by heart by Irish children in schools North or South of the border. The first time, I heard Mid-Term Break, was…

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    identity crisis … away too long

    May 23, 2012 / 20 Comments

    Original photo: Jeff Topping Irish? Northern Irish? British? Ulster Irish? Well, it depends . . . and I know I’m entering dangerous territory here. My brother, more eloquent than I, and still living and writing in Ireland, had to remind me the other day of the “fractured and dissensual nature of [my] cultural background, where declarations of nationhood are open…

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