Quieter than Starbucks, but more fun than the local library, cleaner than your extra bedroom or home office and more affordable than your gym, THE UPTOWN WRITER'S SPACE provides Chicago writers with a dedicated workspace and the supportive community you'd find in a writing program or artistic residency.

The idea for the UPTOWN WRITER'S SPACE was born, then cryogenically frozen while one of its founders was thinking - rather than merely breathing (as Buddha would have you do) - at a beginning level meditation workshop in 2004. More than eighteen months later, however, an article in the New York Times strangely inspiring Sunday Styles section described similar writing spaces in Manhattan. Raising six young boys between them and hopes of peace, quiet and writing time a distant dream, Julie Saltzman and Susan Karp set about creating their dream work space in Chicago.

Susan McLaughlin Karp, besides being the long suffering wife of the prolific and charming Chicago author Josh Karp, the mother of his children and the keeper of his lifestyle in the suburb of Evanston is a writer and performer in her own rite. Susan is a regular contributer to WBEZ's Writers Block Party and a member of the performance collective BoyGirlBoyGirl. Her monologues have been performed at Live Bait Theater and Steppenwolf Theatre and her critically acclaimed solo show "Still" was part of the New York Fringe Festival in 2002. In 2004, "Still" was a finalist for the Fourth Genre Magazine Editor's Prize. Both Susan and her St. Bernard live by Andre Gregory's observation that "the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line".

Back in the day, Julie Saltzman spent her working hours screaming in the currency-option pits of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. After more screaming from having three boys in four years, she decided to follow a different path and pursue her lifelong passion, writing. She now gets out her pent-up anger by playing ice hockey and yelling at her radio while listening to White Sox games. Julie lives in a soundproof house in Wilmette with her husband, Brian, and her three excitable boys Jack, Brent, and Bill.