Yvonne Watterson

Yvonne Watterson is a Northern Irish-born writer and educator now based near Guadalajara, Mexico. She spent more than 30 years in public education, as both a teacher and a leader of school reform efforts. Much of her work as a principal in Arizona focused on equity, inclusion, and student advocacy, earning national attention for her immigration work. She began writing in November 2011 after an invasive breast cancer diagnosis sent her searching online for answers. What began as survival became a sustained writing practice, her work appearing in The Irish Times, IrishCentral.com, and Reading Ireland. Her essays return often to The Troubles & Northern Ireland, Seamus Heaney's poetry, and the long arc of illness, loss, and resilience after being widowed in 2013. She compiled and edited Documented Dreams, a bilingual collection of letters with immigrant students, Bravados: An Anthology of expat narratives, and collaborated with Stephen Travers on the Bass Player – Surviving the Miami Showband Massacre, shortlisted for the Irish Biography of the year. A musician, she sings in an Americana band and plays violin in the Lake Chapala Community Orchestra. She writes because it helps her make sense of things that don’t stay still.