Yvonne Watterson
  • About
  • A Homing Bird
  • Subscribe Now
  • About
  • A Homing Bird
  • Subscribe Now
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

    naming names – 9.11

    September 10, 2018 / No Comments

    Flanked by row upon row of flagpoles set five feet apart, we can stretch out our arms to touch two lives at a time, lest we forget what happened on September 11, 2001. The 9.11 memorial in Tempe, Arizona, is heartbreakingly beautiful, each one of its 2,996 flags signifying a life taken on that horrific autumn morning.  We first visited the memorial in…

    Read More
    Editor
  • Mother's Day

    When Mother’s Day Falls in Ireland – A Stratagem

    March 25, 2017 / No Comments

    I have worked in education long enough that it is not uncommon for me to encounter former students, some of whom are now married with careers and children of their own. It is always surreal to meet these adults who, just a twinkling ago, were writing in composition books about who they would become when they were all grown up. Likewise,…

    Read More
    Editor
  • Feminism,  Memoir

    Hair Matters – Just Ask Hillary Clinton.

    July 29, 2016 / No Comments

    “Didn’t we used to call you Crystal Tipps?” Why yes, you did. Relentlessly. It was funnier to you than it was to me. Teetering on the edge of adolescence in the early seventies, I instinctively knew that Crystal’s coiffure, a big triangular purple frizz, belonged only on the BBC, in the groovy world of cut-out animation created by Hilary Hayton.…

    Read More
    Editor
  • 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 ~ forever with the wild things

    July 23, 2016 / No 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 used to ask me, “So are you ready for Tony and the boys?”…

    Read More
    Editor
Load More
Copyright © & Usage 2026 Yvonne Watterson Writing - All rights reserved. All content published on this blog—including articles, images, and media—is the property of Yvonne Watterson , unless otherwise noted. Unauthorized use or duplication of this material without express written permission is strictly prohibited. You may share brief excerpts and links to blog posts for non-commercial purposes, provided that full and clear credit is given to Yvonne Watterson with a direct link to the original content. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License . Disclaimer The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of any organizations or affiliates. Some posts may include affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission—at no additional cost to you—if you choose to make a purchase through those links. These help support the blog and its content.
Loading Comments...