[3] In 2010, following nominations by the poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and novelist Eugene McCabe, Dorcey was elected to the Irish Academy of Writers and Artists, Aosdána.
[11][12][13][14][15] Dorcey's writing is noted as the first work of Irish literature to portray romantic and erotic relationships between women.
Her themes include the cathartic role of the outsider, political injustice, and the nature of the erotic power to subvert and transfigure.
Her poems have been performed on radio and television stations, such as BBC, RTÉ, and Channel 4, and have been taught on the English curriculum for the Irish Junior Certificate and British GCSEs.
[5] "First Love" was selected for the revised Junior Cycle and included in the BBC anthology A Hundred Favourite Poems of Childhood.
[3] She is currently a research associate at Trinity College Dublin,[5] where she conducted contemporary English literature seminars and led a creative writing workshop during her ten years as a writer in residence at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies.