Dorcey won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature for Literature in 1990 for her short story collection A Noise from the Woodshed. She is a member by peer election of 'Aosdana' the Academy of Irish Artists. She has published four collections of poetry, one novel, one collection of stories and one novella. She is a lesbian feminist and much of her work explores lesbian sexuality, feminism and other issues related to women.

Her poetry is taught on both the Irish Junior Certificate English course and on the British O Level English curriculum. It has been performed on radio and television (RTÉ and Channel 4.) It has also been dramatized for stage productions in Ireland, Britain and Australia in In the Pink (The Raving Beauties) anSunny Side Plucked.

She has been awarded five Art Council Bursaries for literature, in 1990, 1995, 1999 and 2005 and 2008 Her stories and poems have been anthologized in more than one hundred collections and is taught in Irish Studies and Women's Studies courses in universities internationally.

She is a Research Associate at Trinity College, Dublin and a writer in residence at the Centre for Gender and Women's Studies where she gives seminars in contemporary English literature and leads a creative writing workshop.She has lived in the United States, England, France, Spain and Japan, and for over fifteen years she has given talks and readings of her work at major art festivals and at universities and book shops throughout Ireland, Britain and Europe, and the United States.