Michael Te Arawa Bennett is a New Zealand writer, scenarist, author and director for film and television.
[1] Bennett is the co-creator, writer, show-runner and executive producer of TVNZ's Vegas.
He is also the author of In Dark Places, a study of the wrongful conviction of Teina Pora for the 1992 murder of Susan Burdett, which won the 2017 Ngaio Marsh crime writing award.
[2] His 2022 crime novel, Better the Blood, was shortlisted for the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2023 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards[3] and for the Best Novel at the 2023 Ngaio Marsh Awards.
He resides in Auckland with his partner and three children,[5] and is the head of screenwriting at South Seas Film School.