[8] Etchells has published several works of fiction, Endland Stories, The Dream Dictionary for the Modern Dreamer and the novel The Broken World and has written about contemporary performance in The Guardian[9] and in artist monographs, such as an MIT Press publication on the work of Tehching Hsieh[10][11] and a Live Art Development Agency publication on Ron Athey.

[13][14] On 25 November 2013, Etchells gave a public keynote address Live Forever,[15] at Tate Modern in the frame of their research series Collecting the Performative[16] A new public sculpture work by Etchells, A Stitch in Time was commissioned for the Lumiere light festival in Derry, and installed on top of the old Rosemount Shirt Factory.

Etchells regularly collaborates with artists, including photographer Hugo Glendinning, with whom he worked on the 1999 exhibition Void Spaces[21] and the ongoing series Empty Stages.

"[24] Etchells collaborated with interactive performance maker Ant Hampton on two projects Lest We See (2013)[25] and The Quiet Volume (2010) which has been produced in English, German, Spanish, Slovenian, Japanese, Polish, Dutch and Portuguese.

The citation for the award ran as follows: "For their use of intimately whispered text in a work in libraries across the city and for a score which heightened the experience in a space at once public and private".