Yvonne was born in Ayrshire and grew up in Renfrewshire, Lanarkshire, and Midlothian. She studied at Edinburgh University then worked in Angus as an English teacher and oboe instructor. In 1990 she moved to Orkney and settled near Stromness with her husband and three sons. She teaches English in Stromness Academy and is also a musician. She has contributed to various anthologies and magazines including Deliberately Thirsty, New Writing Scotland, Riptide, Cenrastus and Poetry Scotland. She received a SAC Writers' Bursary in 2002. She collaborated with Kevin Coffey and Tim Fitzpatrick on Between the Terminals, a film based on one of her poems, for the 2001 St. Magnus Festival, and with artists Frances Pelly and Malcolm Olva and writer Nigel Wheale on the exhibition Flows and Traces. Publications include Rationed Air (with artist Carol Dunbar), Swappan the Mallimacks (Galdragon Press), Clear Day on the Black Craig and Nouster (Braga Press).