Gail Butensky and Grant Faulkner on Telling Stories to Photos

Gail Butensky and Grant Faulkner on Telling Stories to Photos

May 11, 2026 · 42 min

About this episode

This episode features a discussion on storytelling and photography with Gail Butensky and Grant Faulkner, celebrating Grant's new book and the indie publishing scene.

We’re late to celebrate Grant’s new book, something out there in the distance, so we’re doing it this week, bringing on his co-collaborator on the project, Gail Butensky. Grant and Gail partnered up to create a beautiful and unusual project. This week’s show mixes things up a bit because Brooke interviews Grant, and Grant interviews Gail, and Grant shows up for his segments in all kinds of locations, including his mother’s apartment at her memory care facility. The show covers the power of intuition when it comes to both storytelling and photography, the risks indie presses can and do take, and why loving a good road-trip is a prerequisite to being Grant’s friend. And the trend this week, more state of mind than trend, is in celebration of indie books. Gail Butensky is a renowned photographer whose work has been featured on numerous record covers as well as in books and magazines. Her lens documented the punk and rock scenes of the '80s and '90s, with work appearing in The San Francisco Guardian , The Village Voice , and The Chicago Reader , and in publications including Our Band Could Be Your Life and CBGB & OMFUG: 30 Years . She is the author of the photography book, Every…

People in this episode

Host: Grant Faulkner

Guest: Gail Butensky

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: National Novel Writing Month

Books & works: Every Bend, something out there in the distance, The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story, Our Band Could Be Your Life, CBGB & OMFUG: 30 Years

Places: San Francisco, Chicago, New York

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