On graduating, Molloy moved to Barcelona where she worked on a project which was to document the history of the Irish on the European continent.

She went on to work for the Spanish magazine Destino, the London-based Art and Artists and for the Irish Independent.

In 1970 Molloy won the first prize in the XI Salon Femenino de Arte Actual in Barcelona.

[1][4] Gethsemane Day was published in 2006, Long-Distance Swimmer in 2009 and The Poems of Dorothy Molloy, which collected all of these and unpublished and uncollected work, in 2019.

[citation needed] Molloy married Andrew Carpenter, a lecturer and professor from the School of English in UCD on 3 February 1983.