During her time at Harvard, Dovey made documentaries that highlighted the relationships between farmers and rural labourers in post-apartheid South Africa.
She made a documentary about wine farm labour relations in the Western Cape of South Africa,[1] called Aftertaste, as part of her honours thesis in 2003.
[2] In 2004 Dovey worked briefly for the television programme NOW with Bill Moyers at Channel Thirteen in New York City, before moving to South Africa to study creative writing at the University of Cape Town.
She wrote her first novel, Blood Kin, as her thesis for an MA in creative writing under the supervision of poet Stephen Watson, then did her graduate studies in Social Anthropology at New York University.
It tells the story of a fictional military coup from the perspective of the overthrown leader's portraitist, chef, and barber.