Marjorie Welish's The Annotated 'Here' and Selected Poems was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Her writing on art has appeared in Art in America, Art International, Art News, BOMB (magazine), Partisan Review, and Salmagundi. A collection of her art criticism came out in 1999 entitled, Signifying Art: Essays on Art after 1960.

She has received grants and fellowships from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, the Djerassi Foundation, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Fifth Floor Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the International Studio Program, the MacDowell Colony Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Trust for Mutual Understanding.