Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she moved to New York in her early twenties where she worked in the fashion department of Cosmopolitan magazine, later moved into photography, and eventually ran Magnum Photos corporate photography division.
In 1992 she moved to London and, in spite of herself, began a successful career as a cartoonist and book illustrator.
Her sharply ironic work appears regularly in magazines and newspapers such as The Spectator, Red, The Sunday Times and others.
It captures the grief, nostalgia, and chaos of traveling home to care for an elderly parent in crisis and was selected at one of Oprah Daily's "12 Picture-Perfect Grown-up Graphic Novels".
[1][2][3] Dorrance is married to documentary filmmaker Paul Yule, with whom she has a son.