They're not Dumas' 3 Musketeers, but Jen Sookfong Lee, Mary Novik and June Hutton have put their own SPiN on "one for all and all for one"! And in this spirit, they shared with us both their writing and their personal stories of how their writing group, SPiN, has lead them to completed novels, two of them published.

Jen, Mary and June met during a the Booming Ground writers' workshop at UBC. Recognizing in each other a seriousness of craft and purpose they keep contact after the workshop, became friends, and formed a writing group they dubbed SPiN.

The three shared details of their group's inner workings and their journeys from story concept to full time writers. It's clear from their readings that each has her own style. This hasn't stopped them from providing writing critiques and moral support to each other. Though their subject matter is pre-21st century their communication methods are not. In addition to face-to-face meetings they make extensive use of the Internet for communicating and firmly believe every writer needs a website.

Jen’s novel, The End of East, will come out in March 2007 and is part of Knopf Canada's New Face of Fiction series. Mary’s novel, Conceit, will be published in fall 2007. June's novel, Underground, is receiving interest and they're hoping for an announcement soon.

Their original commitment was staying together until they finished their respective novels but it's hard to imagine them not staying together for many encores to come.

SPiN Website: www.spinwrites.com
Jen Sookfong Lee's Website: www.sookfong.com