Things Grown Distant is a collection of five stories by Mike Fox, one of which is published for the first
time. It also features photographic images created by Nicholas Royle in response to the stories. The book is the fourth in a series of collaborations between writers and artists – the first, Interpolated Stories by David Rose and Leah Leaf, was published in 2022.

The stories in Things Grown Distant explore three themes: the pliability of memory; the quest for personal truth; and transcendence – those moments when the quotidian is transformed into something sublime, however briefly. In essence, the stories are concerned with self-explanation and self-understanding, with the way we tell stories to others but also ourselves, in search of an earlier self, to explain what we have now become.