In 2011, with poets Dave Landsberger and Eric Plattner, Rooney co-founded the Chicago not-for-profit poetry collective Poems While You Wait, which composes typewritten poetry on demand at local libraries, street & music festivals, museums, & art galleries. Rooney's 2012 novel-in-verse Robinson Alone, inspired by the life & work of poet Weldon Kees and his alter-ego persona-character "Robinson," won the 2013 Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry. Her debut novel, O, Democracy!, was released by Fifth Star Press in Spring 2014 and her second novel, Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, loosely based on the life of Margaret Fishback, was released by St. Martin's Press in 2017.