WRITING
2026 Independent Press Award
BREAKING NEWS: Rescuing Ethan and Gabe: The Power of One Stable Committed Relationship has won a literary prize! The 2026 Independent Press Award in NYC has awarded the breakout novel the Distinguished Favorite in the category of Contemporary Fiction.
Erik has written extensively on themes of social justice and children’s rights (under a different name). During the COVID pandemic, he began writing fiction, inspired by his field work. His first novel was published in 2024. He is presently working on his second book.
Novels
Consumed in Care: The 42% More Likely (2027)
Grounded in real-world events, the novel follows four disparate teenagers living together in a group home in Temiskaming Shores, Ontario, when a devastating fire leaves one of them dead and the others struggling to rebuild what it destroyed.
As a Fire Marshal and OPP Detective follow the evidence, a veteran journalist investigates the systemic failures, and a determined young lawyer pursues the interests of her mysterious client, the story spans from Bay Street to Bangkok, and from Cairo to Riznykivka. Linking these seemingly disconnected lives is one troubling statistic: children raised in care are 42% more likely to die than other children.
Consumed in Care culminates in a Coroner’s Inquest in which seemingly small decisions are reconstructed piece by piece, revealing how they combined to devastating effect — and what can happen when the system created to protect vulnerable children becomes part of what places them at risk.
Rescuing Ethan and Gabe:
The Power of One Stable Committed Relationship (2024)
Inspired by true events, this novel shares the story of two boys, one from a wealthy Jewish family in British Columbia, and the other from a remote Indigenous community in Northern Manitoba, who have nothing in common except the one stable and committed relationship that impacted their lives.
Spanning 20 years, from the beginning of the millennium in 2000 to the height of the global pandemic of 2020, their experiences show how one person can change another’s destiny with unexpected and, sometimes, tragic consequences.