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something out there in the distance
Two lovers go on one final road trip through the American desert, hoping that they can outrun life itself.
Flash-fiction master Grant Faulkner and punk photographer Gail Butensky have partnered to create this unique narrative made up of stories alongside edge-of-the-world photography. The book tells of two lovers taking a reckless, searching road trip through the American West. Dawn is a photographer who captures desert landscapes. Jonny drives just to drive, running away from the end of time or running toward the end of time, looking for a home even as his restlessness overtakes him. By turns funny, poignant, and heartbreaking, something out there in the distance is big in emotions while brief in words. An extraordinary collaboration between word and image, Dawn and Jonny’s journey transports us to a place, achingly familiar, populated by love, loss, and wonder.
Flash-fiction master Grant Faulkner and punk photographer Gail Butensky have partnered to create this unique narrative made up of stories alongside edge-of-the-world photography. The book tells of two lovers taking a reckless, searching road trip through the American West. Dawn is a photographer who captures desert landscapes. Jonny drives just to drive, running away from the end of time or running toward the end of time, looking for a home even as his restlessness overtakes him. By turns funny, poignant, and heartbreaking, something out there in the distance is big in emotions while brief in words. An extraordinary collaboration between word and image, Dawn and Jonny’s journey transports us to a place, achingly familiar, populated by love, loss, and wonder.
98 pages, Hardcover
Published January 13, 2026
About the author
Grant Faulkner
18 books120 followersGrant Faulkner is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, the co-host of the Write-minded podcast, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author.
He has published three books on writing: The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story; Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo; and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide.
He’s also published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, a collection of short stories, Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story.
His “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky, is coming out in September 2025 with the University of New Mexico Press.
His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s Flash Fiction America; New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction; and in several editions of the annual Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies.
His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project Writers Council, Litquake’s board of directors, the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council, and Left Margin Lit’s Advisory Board.
He’s presented at events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Associated Writing Programs Conference, Book Expo America, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Oakland Book Festival, the Bay Area Book Festival, Poets & Writers Live, the San Francisco Writers Conference, the Commonwealth Club, the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, Writers Digest West, the Porchlight storytelling series, Litquake, Lit Crawl, the Mendocino Writers Conference, the Sierra Writers Conference, and the Arizona State Library Association’s YA Summit.
He has published three books on writing: The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story; Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo; and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide.
He’s also published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, a collection of short stories, Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story.
His “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky, is coming out in September 2025 with the University of New Mexico Press.
His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s Flash Fiction America; New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction; and in several editions of the annual Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies.
His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project Writers Council, Litquake’s board of directors, the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council, and Left Margin Lit’s Advisory Board.
He’s presented at events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Associated Writing Programs Conference, Book Expo America, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Oakland Book Festival, the Bay Area Book Festival, Poets & Writers Live, the San Francisco Writers Conference, the Commonwealth Club, the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, Writers Digest West, the Porchlight storytelling series, Litquake, Lit Crawl, the Mendocino Writers Conference, the Sierra Writers Conference, and the Arizona State Library Association’s YA Summit.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 20, 2026
A tale of two doomed lovers, one running from a fatal diagnosis of breast cancer, the other--her lover, her driver, her friend. They roam the western US, trying to outrun death and find something in their last moments together.
"The moment we know we're trapped--that's when we start moving the fastest." Like a toned down Bonnie and Clyde, they invade, they steal, but they also connect with others along the way.
I found this to be a profound meditation on life and death, love and loss. The photos perfectly accompany Faulkner's vision and talent in encapsulating very deep thoughts in small spaces.
I highly recommend for readers who love brief fiction, ekphrastic fiction, prose poetry, and are interested in the complexities of companionship and grief. "I tried to give her the highway."
I wept.
"Death takes. It takes, and it takes again. What it gives, I don't know."
Exquisite moments such as these that would not happen otherwise.
"The moment we know we're trapped--that's when we start moving the fastest." Like a toned down Bonnie and Clyde, they invade, they steal, but they also connect with others along the way.
I found this to be a profound meditation on life and death, love and loss. The photos perfectly accompany Faulkner's vision and talent in encapsulating very deep thoughts in small spaces.
I highly recommend for readers who love brief fiction, ekphrastic fiction, prose poetry, and are interested in the complexities of companionship and grief. "I tried to give her the highway."
I wept.
"Death takes. It takes, and it takes again. What it gives, I don't know."
Exquisite moments such as these that would not happen otherwise.
January 21, 2026
A gorgeous tale of love, and living life on your terms. It’s brimming with spirituality, playfulness, darkness, and light. The photographs and story are woven into an enchanting road trip through the Southwest’s desert and mountain ranges. It reminds us to play, pretend, take chances, and to feel deeply.
February 19, 2026
“And so we drove. Because in movement there’s always something else. Something new.” -Grant Faulkner, something out there in the distance
How far would you go to escape reality? Is it possible to truly escape at all? In their innovative flash novel, something out there in the distance, writer Grant Faulkner and photographer Gail Butensky join forces to collaborate on a story in which a couple decides to embark a road trip through the American West as a form of escape. Throughout their journey to various destinations, Jonny and Dawn are faced with love, loss, and danger, and are forced to make difficult decisions. They never stay in one spot for too long, as photographs and passages of flash track their attempts to outrun fate.
Faulker is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, co-founder of the Flash Fiction Collective, and the executive producer of America’s Next Great Author. His work has appeared in published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, LitHub, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, The Southwest Review, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, Five Points, The Rumpus, and Miracle Monocle. Butensky, meanwhile, is the author of the photography book, Every Bend. Her photographs of alternative and punk rockers were recently featured in The New Yorker.
In the novel, Jonny drives Dawn, a photographer, through the American West in an attempt to outrun her recent cancer diagnosis, making both planned and unplanned stops along the way. As Jonny drives, Dawn takes pictures to document their journey, which are seen alongside Jonny’s narration. In terms of who is driving and who is riding in the passenger seat, this is a perfect representation of the two different characters and their personalities: Jonny is the calm and collected type, while Dawn is more carefree and “out there.” I read Jonny’s role as the driver as his attempt to regain control; he’s already at risk of losing Dawn. Meanwhile, she’s focused on the world passing them by.
After the pair visits Dawn’s grandparents, she says, “I like to think that some crimes go unnoticed, the ones with need at their core.” This is an attempt to rationalize her choice to remain silent when her grandfather gave them money. She later reveals, in an emotional moment, that she’d already taken money from her grandmother.
Neither Dawn nor Jonny are perfect, and I found them more and more relatable as I continued to read—despite the fact that they weren’t always making great choices. As Jonny says, “People always say it’s bad to live in denial, but I don’t know what’s so bad about being happy with whatever little bits of happiness you can hold.” I’m sure the feeling of wanting to pack up and run away when things get bad will resonate with many readers.
When Dawn says, “The worst thing that can happen to you is a stomachache,” I couldn’t help but laugh. This passage caught my attention on my second time through the book because it highlights a dichotomy present in many people. Even with her looming diagnosis, it’s Dawn who tells Jonny that a stomachache is the worst that can happen. We can often become so focused on small things happening in the moment as a way of blocking out and forgetting what’s happening in the bigger picture.
Butensky’s photographs vary from a drained swimming pool, a straight shot of a highway, to a sole Yucca standing before a bright blue sky. At times the photos are paired with text in a more literal sense: capturing a specific sign or location that was mentioned, or a high contrast photo of a rose, the edges dark and creeping in as Jonny’s narration reveals that Dawn “prayed that her cells would turn into roses.”
At other times, I felt that the photos captured the emotions of the text, rather than focusing on a certain stop along their way. One that especially stood out to me was a dark and smokey sky. The brown and yellow hue of the sky appears almost apocalyptic, creating a feeling of dread and impending doom. Between Faulkner’s lyric brevity and Butensky’s powerful photography, the reader is immersed in Dawn and Jonny’s journey.
It’s worth mention that the book itself is a thing of beauty. The cover features a dirt road stretching toward a bright blue sky, tire tracks winding over each other. The hardback portion of the cover is about a fourth shorter than the pages within, revealing a white page. The title broken, running on and off the page, emerging from beneath the partial cover.
The layout of the pages are often reminiscent of the format of an art book, with a spread containing a photograph on one side and text on the other. While some photos take up half a page or less, others expand onto the second page of the spread. At times, some spreads have no photos, the blank space around the text emphasizing the feeling of being lost and in a moment of transition.
Once I started the novel, I couldn’t stop. I had to know what happened to the characters and was especially interested in learning the outcome of Dawn’s cancer diagnosis. something out there in the distance is unlike any other novel I’ve read before, but it’s one that I would recommend to a broad range of readers.
How far would you go to escape reality? Is it possible to truly escape at all? In their innovative flash novel, something out there in the distance, writer Grant Faulkner and photographer Gail Butensky join forces to collaborate on a story in which a couple decides to embark a road trip through the American West as a form of escape. Throughout their journey to various destinations, Jonny and Dawn are faced with love, loss, and danger, and are forced to make difficult decisions. They never stay in one spot for too long, as photographs and passages of flash track their attempts to outrun fate.
Faulker is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, co-founder of the Flash Fiction Collective, and the executive producer of America’s Next Great Author. His work has appeared in published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, LitHub, Writer’s Digest, The Writer, The Southwest Review, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, Five Points, The Rumpus, and Miracle Monocle. Butensky, meanwhile, is the author of the photography book, Every Bend. Her photographs of alternative and punk rockers were recently featured in The New Yorker.
In the novel, Jonny drives Dawn, a photographer, through the American West in an attempt to outrun her recent cancer diagnosis, making both planned and unplanned stops along the way. As Jonny drives, Dawn takes pictures to document their journey, which are seen alongside Jonny’s narration. In terms of who is driving and who is riding in the passenger seat, this is a perfect representation of the two different characters and their personalities: Jonny is the calm and collected type, while Dawn is more carefree and “out there.” I read Jonny’s role as the driver as his attempt to regain control; he’s already at risk of losing Dawn. Meanwhile, she’s focused on the world passing them by.
After the pair visits Dawn’s grandparents, she says, “I like to think that some crimes go unnoticed, the ones with need at their core.” This is an attempt to rationalize her choice to remain silent when her grandfather gave them money. She later reveals, in an emotional moment, that she’d already taken money from her grandmother.
Neither Dawn nor Jonny are perfect, and I found them more and more relatable as I continued to read—despite the fact that they weren’t always making great choices. As Jonny says, “People always say it’s bad to live in denial, but I don’t know what’s so bad about being happy with whatever little bits of happiness you can hold.” I’m sure the feeling of wanting to pack up and run away when things get bad will resonate with many readers.
When Dawn says, “The worst thing that can happen to you is a stomachache,” I couldn’t help but laugh. This passage caught my attention on my second time through the book because it highlights a dichotomy present in many people. Even with her looming diagnosis, it’s Dawn who tells Jonny that a stomachache is the worst that can happen. We can often become so focused on small things happening in the moment as a way of blocking out and forgetting what’s happening in the bigger picture.
Butensky’s photographs vary from a drained swimming pool, a straight shot of a highway, to a sole Yucca standing before a bright blue sky. At times the photos are paired with text in a more literal sense: capturing a specific sign or location that was mentioned, or a high contrast photo of a rose, the edges dark and creeping in as Jonny’s narration reveals that Dawn “prayed that her cells would turn into roses.”
At other times, I felt that the photos captured the emotions of the text, rather than focusing on a certain stop along their way. One that especially stood out to me was a dark and smokey sky. The brown and yellow hue of the sky appears almost apocalyptic, creating a feeling of dread and impending doom. Between Faulkner’s lyric brevity and Butensky’s powerful photography, the reader is immersed in Dawn and Jonny’s journey.
It’s worth mention that the book itself is a thing of beauty. The cover features a dirt road stretching toward a bright blue sky, tire tracks winding over each other. The hardback portion of the cover is about a fourth shorter than the pages within, revealing a white page. The title broken, running on and off the page, emerging from beneath the partial cover.
The layout of the pages are often reminiscent of the format of an art book, with a spread containing a photograph on one side and text on the other. While some photos take up half a page or less, others expand onto the second page of the spread. At times, some spreads have no photos, the blank space around the text emphasizing the feeling of being lost and in a moment of transition.
Once I started the novel, I couldn’t stop. I had to know what happened to the characters and was especially interested in learning the outcome of Dawn’s cancer diagnosis. something out there in the distance is unlike any other novel I’ve read before, but it’s one that I would recommend to a broad range of readers.
February 22, 2026
This book is extraordinary—luminous, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny even in the shadow of death. I found myself underlining sentences to linger over their quiet, poetic wisdom.
Grant has an uncanny gift for building a novel from small, precise stories that gather into something expansive and deeply moving. Each piece feels like a jewel; together they form a crown.
With Gail’s gritty photographs woven throughout, the book becomes an immersive experience—textured, intimate, unforgettable. Reading it felt like sitting down to a royal banquet: rich without excess, layered without confusion, completely satisfying.
I finished it feeling nourished and awed. This is a rare book—beautifully made and impossible to forget.
Grant has an uncanny gift for building a novel from small, precise stories that gather into something expansive and deeply moving. Each piece feels like a jewel; together they form a crown.
With Gail’s gritty photographs woven throughout, the book becomes an immersive experience—textured, intimate, unforgettable. Reading it felt like sitting down to a royal banquet: rich without excess, layered without confusion, completely satisfying.
I finished it feeling nourished and awed. This is a rare book—beautifully made and impossible to forget.
May 29, 2026
This book was so pretty and sad at the same time, the difference between the words and the story the pictures tell is night and day.
March 6, 2026
Grant Faulkner is my new favorite author. His ability to evoke so much emotion in so few words is amazing. This book made me laugh, brought me to tears, and left an impression. It's one of those you keep thinking about long after you've finished. The photographs add to the story, and by the end, I felt like I'd traveled in the car alongside the two lovers. Beautiful book, and one I'll read again.
March 29, 2026
A beautiful book, thought-provoking in its tight, sparse prose and its photographs from the American road. It's super brief, more like the length of a short story. Perhaps it's cheating to count it toward my 2026 reading challenge. But count it I shall!
May 6, 2026
Easy one sitting read. Makes me want to carpe diem, but I am afraid that a year from now I won't really remember anything in particular about this story. Maybe that's okay though.
January 24, 2026
Love an ekphrastic project, and the story behind the book is just as fun as the book itself. The style of the photos, and the printed book itself, are a delight.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews