Join Ockhams short-lister and award-winning filmmaker Michael Bennett in conversation with current Michael King Centre resident writer and Ockham poetry prize winner Helen Heath as they discuss writing across genres, solving mysteries and the craft of writing.
🖋️ About Michael 🖋️
Michael Bennett (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Whakaue) is an author and filmmaker. He committed much of his recent career on the fight for justice for Teina Pora, a young Māori man wrongly imprisoned for 21 years. Michael's book, documentary and dramatic feature film on Teina's case all won awards including the Ngaio Marsh and Best Director and Best Film at the NZTV Awards. Michael's first novel, Better The Blood, was finalist for the Fiction Award at the 2023 Ockhams, and has been translated into 9 languages.
🖋️ About Helen 🖋️
Helen Heath is a poet and essayist from the Kapiti Coast, Wellington. Her most recent collection of poems – Are Friends Electric? (VUP 2018) – won the 2019 Ockham Book Awards. Helen is nearing the end of her eight-week residency at the Michael King Writers' Centre where she is working on a memoir drawing on diaries, memory, imagination and research. Part of this project is about her 3x Great Aunt, Mary Frances Heaton, and the embroidered samplers she created after being wrongly committed to a lunatic asylum.
👂 This event is a part of our on-going Ears Wide Open series, bringing poetry, music and local voices to the Ponsonby community.