Yvonne has lived in Orkney since 1990. She studied English at the University of Edinburgh and completed an MLitt in Highlands and Islands Literature at UHI.
She is a writer and musician, an oboe player and founding member of Orkney Camerata. She writes poetry and non-fiction and is interested in language and its changes; how – as with the physical environment – we use and abuse it, wittingly and unwittingly. She delivers writing workshops and leads renga sessions. She is a Lead Reader for Open Book, running shared reading and creative writing sessions in Orkney.
Her work has been published in magazines and anthologies in Scotland, Slovakia, Australia and the US including New Writing Scotland, These Islands We Sing (Polygon), Archipelagos (EU 2014) and The Café Review. Other publications include Swappan the Mallimacks (2006), In the Hanging Valley (2008), Hours (2011), and Reflections (2012).
She has worked with visual artists, musicians and writers on projects including Between the Terminals and Out of Rubbish and Tinsel of War for the St Magnus Festival; the Mailboats project devised by Hansel Press with writers and artists in Orkney and Shetland; Shadows of Our Ancestors, a poetry and photography project in the Heart of Neolithic Orkney as part of the UNESCO Year of World Heritage; and the University of Edinburgh project Writing the North. Currently she is co-writing an opera libretto, We Wear the Sea Like a Coat, with playwright Rachel Lampert and composer Sally Lamb McCune for Opera Ithaca.
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