Her writing was influenced by the example of Greil Marcus in seeking a broader cultural context and often a political meaning for the bands she reviewed.
Marlowe's first memoir, How To Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z, was widely reviewed and discussed in many online groups of drug users or recovering addicts.
She contributes frequently to the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and New York Post, mainly writing about Afghanistan and the US counterinsurgency there.
She is one of 220 contributors of entries to A New Literary History of America (Harvard University Press, 2009), edited by Greil Marcus and Werner Sollors.
"[3] She has drawn attention to Afghanistan's robust private sector and rapid economic growth in op-eds for The Wall Street Journal, commented on Kabul's vibrant expat social scene,[4] and criticized Afghan President Hamid Karzai frequently for Taliban sympathies, incompetence and toleration of corruption in the many pieces in The Wall Street Journal, New York Post and a 2008 op-ed in The Washington Post.