Dunedin's Caselberg Trust has come to the aid of two Christchurch writers displaced by the February 22 earthquake.
The trust will lend its Broad Bay artists and writers residence to Sumner writer and film-maker Halina Ogonowska-Coates and Lyttelton poet and novelist Anna Smith.
"The Caselberg trustees felt very strongly that we needed to support Christchurch writers and artists, by making the cottage available to those displaced in the recent earthquakes," trust chairwoman Dr Janet Downs said.
Ogonowska-Coates said her Sumner home had been destroyed in the quake and it would be at least 18 months before the Earthquake Commission and insurance company had settled her claim.
"Unfortunately, my home is on a cliff and has been made uninhabitable due to rock fall. I am homeless at the moment and staying with friends and finding it very hard to work," she said.
Smith said the quake had made it hard to concentrate on completing her short story collection.
"The possibility of being able to work unhampered by these kind of difficulties would mean a great deal. It would be marvellous to have the opportunity to get back to the task of writing on a piece of steady ground."
Both writers have Dunedin connections. Smith taught women's studies and English at the University of Otago in 1989-92 and Ogonowska-Coates went to St Francis Xavier School in Mornington. Her father, Ken Coates, was an Otago Daily Times journalist in the 1960s.
