Friday Five: Stanchion founder/editor Jeff Bogle on publishing, lit mag fees, and street cats

‘I just want to keep doing, and creating, and moving forward. I’m also never really satisfied.’

For Jeff Bogle, restlessness is the muse that keeps his creative juices flowing. A man of many interests–from music and travel writing to photography, cats, cooking, parenting, and more–he channels his passions into a slew of creative projects. Perhaps best known among literary folks as the founder and editor of the beautiful print-only literary magazine Stanchion and its companion book publishing arm, Stanchion Books, he’s also the author of Street Cats & Where to Find Them, published in 2025. In Street Cats, he combines his skillful photography with his travel writing expertise and love of felines to create a captivating travel book.

Stanchion was not his first entrepreneurial endeavor. As a teenager, he launched his own indie record label as a way to become involved in the music scene. When the global COVID-19 pandemic hit and his work as a travel writer came to a halt, he launched Stanchion. Although the magazine is print-only, recently Jeff reopened an online branch, called Elegant Variations, as a venue for other excellent writings that don’t find space in the print publication.

Read on to learn more about Jeff, his literary magazine and book publishing operation, his views on lit mags that charge for submissions (Stanchion does not, and also pays contributors), and why street cats make great tour guides.

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I’ll make this short: it’s National Flash Fiction Month

Can you write a short story a day this month?

It’s June 1, the start of a new month and, for writers wanting to hone their flash fiction craft, National Flash Fiction Month–an opportunity provided by the Flash Fiction Institute for writers to write a flash story (typically 1,000 words or fewer) each day this month. (I’m behind already.)

Here are sine details, via the Flash Fiction Institute’s announcement (linked above):

Interested? Sign up at the National Flash Fiction Substack. Or if you, like me, prefer no accountability, just follow along on the social media links posted above, you rebel.

Photo by Vlad Panov on Unsplash