Awards include the Scintilla Welsh Open Poetry competition in 2002 and the Cecil Day Lewis Play Award in 2005 for What Are Neighbours For? His story Jolt was shortlisted for the Willesden Prize and appeared in New Short Stories 1, edited by Zadie Smith. He received an arts’ bursary award in 2009 and a Hennessy award nomination in 2010.

Peeling Oranges (2007)

This is a story of a paternal quest interwoven with the histories of the two emergent states of Spain and Ireland. In his research for this novel, Lawless accessed in the National Archive previously unpublished and sometimes censored material about the Irish Civil War and the Spanish Civil War, and it is generally thought this is the first time a novel dealt with early Irish diplomacy as a motif. ‘A book to lose oneself in. I highly recommend it’ Gabriel Byrne.

For Love of Anna (2009)

There are three main strands running through this novel. Firstly, it is a love story - Anna is a ballerina with whom the main protagonist, the university student, Guido van Thool, falls in love. But Anna is also an acronym for Anarchists of the New Age, which brings one to the second dimension of the novel, ideological in its pondering through the mind of Guido on what alternatives there are to the monolith of corporate capitalism. Anna wants to steer Guido away from this sort of ‘dangerous’ thinking, but his friend, the anarchist Philippe, keeps goading him. Paralleling the lives of the lovers is that of a corrupt judge, Jeremiah Delahyde (the third strand) who literally crashes into the world of Guido and Anna on a fatal New Years night.

The Avenue (2010)

The story begins with a scantily-dressed girl dancing in a lighted window, which jolts Francis Copeland from his world of books. Francis, now middle-aged, whose life and marriage are in a rut, fantasises about the girl and finds it hard to accept, as he discovers later, that she is Judy, a drug addict and a dancer in the local pub. The hidden world of the avenue unfolds to Francis. Who is Myrtle, his wife? (Does she genuinely go to bingo every Tuesday night?). He does not know her. Who are the real parents of the street kid Freddy? Who was the neighbour whose car killed Francis’ mother when Francis was twelve years old? Raw suburban truths are exposed as Francis, with the help of the local children, slowly unravels the secrets of the avenue. ‘This book is very good’ Jennifer Johnston. ‘A work of passion and truth’ Declan Kiberd.

Clearing The Tangled Wood: Poetry as a way of seeing the world , was published by the prestigious Academica Press in the USA in 2009 (one of their titles, G. F. La Freniere's The Decline of Nature, was nominated for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in history). Lawless’ meditation attempts to vindicate poetry in our lives and refutes Plato’s reasoning for banishing the poets from his ideal republic on the grounds that they were irrational or even effeminate. The work is a global look at modern poetry and Lawless provides his own verse translations from Irish and Spanish. ‘Clearing The Tangled Wood is a thrilling sequence of revelations, a beautifully written work of love, pleasure and insight’ Brendan Kennelly. ‘A linguistic ballet, learned and lively on behalf of poetry’ John Montague.