Dorothy Molloy

Dorothy Molloy (10 June 1942 – 4 January 2004) was an Irish poet, journalist and artist.

Early life Dorothy Mary Molloy was born in Ballina, County Mayo to Patrick Molloy and Catherine Doris Murphy. Her father was a builder and moved the family of three sons and two daughters to Dublin in about 1948. As a result, Molloy was educated in the Loreto Abbey, Dalkey. She went on to University College Dublin, UCD, where she studied languages — specifically French and Spanish. Molloy worked in both countries as an exchange student and au pair. 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.

However Molloy had been diagnosed with liver cancer in November 2003 and died in Dublin on 4 January 2004.

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was published in 2006, Long-Distance Swimmer in 2009 and The Poems of Dorothy Molloy, which collected all of these and unpublished and uncollected work, in 2019.

Personal life Molloy married Andrew Carpenter, a lecturer and professor from the School of English in UCD on 3 February 1983. They had no children.