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.
1. A lot of members of the online literary community know you best as the founder and editor of Stanchion magazine and, more recently, Stanchion Books. But you’re also an award-winning photographer, a journalist, a world traveler, a cat lover, and a music lover, and hold many other interests. How does your multi-faceted background reflect the kind of magazine and books you publish?
I think it’s my restlessness and curiosity that helps make Stanchion Magazine and Books so diverse and interesting to me, and hopefully, to others, too. Despite the kind way you position me there, I’m not a super fascinating person lol! But I am a really curious one, interested in hearing, seeing, and reading about the experiences of others, the lives–past, present, and future–of people with whom I may share very little. The music I listen to, films I watch, podcasts I frequent, books I read, and the stories/poems I am drawn to as the editor of Stanchion reflect this. And thank goodness! Because I’m Stanchion’s only reader, the one saying yes/no to the thousands of pieces of writing submitted, it is important that I want to fill its pages with stories, essays, poems, etc., that reflect a panoply of the human experience. I think this is what makes Stanchion, the magazine and the books, pretty great. It’s all so, so, so much more than me (save for the photographs inside the issues, which are pretty much all mine because I have tens of thousands of images on my hard drive and in the cloud, and I don’t have to pay myself! Haha).
2. What led you to venture into the world of print-only literary magazines and create Stanchion (the magazine) in 2020?
2020 was a scary year. COVID-19 arrived and forced us inside, ended so many lives, and altered countless more. As a travel writer, my career was halted. I thought it might be over. I was delivering toys–sidewalk chalk, puzzles, books, and more–for an indie toy shop, gloved and masked, to make a bit of money. It was after one delivery that the idea for Stanchion hit me. I was sad, scared, and thoroughly zapped of creativity. I recalled the time, in my late teens, when I started a record label primarily because music changed my life in a real way as a 17-year-old and I wanted to be involved, but couldn’t play or sing. Now here I was, unable to write. In addition to losing all my work, my creativity, which often comes from travel and having experiences, was gone. So, I thought, why not start making something with, not the music of others, but with their words. As one of the first “dad bloggers” I had met many terrific writers and reached out to some of my favorite guys to ask if I could republish their old tales of fatherhood, life, etc., in a small print magazine. Oh, I’m also a staunch contrarian so when I heard that print was dead, I was determined to prove that it wasn’t. Lol.
I was always a kind person who would give the names and email addresses of editors to fellow writers and friends who asked, never calling in favors in return. But Stanchion gave me the opportunity to ask my network of bloggers, parents, friends, and family to subscribe for $20, for 4 small issues a year. Many people kindly did and that helped me get those first issues made, start paying writers (just $5 a piece back then) and well, here we are today.
3. What inspired you to expand the Stanchion enterprise into the world of small indie presses?
Like I said previously, I’m restless! I just want to keep doing, and creating, and moving forward. I’m also never really satisfied. I’ve always been like this. It’s a blessing and a curse, to be honest. I had made roughly eight issues of the magazine at that point, two years in, they’d gotten bigger/thicker, with a spine by that point, I was paying writers a bit more, and I had developed some kind of reputation/indie cred for making a beautiful thing and for being a kind person who championed others on social media. I just felt like it was time to take another step into the literary world by publishing books. It was less “being inspired” and more “I can’t sit still”!
I still didn’t really know what I was doing (still don’t, to be honest) but I’ve found that you can accomplish a lot with curiosity, wonder, and by trying hard. That’s really all I offer the world. I’m not particularly skilled at anything, but I try and I care. It’s taken me sorta far in life.
4. I’ll admit that I’m a big fan of cats, so naturally I loved Street Cats and Where to Find Them, which is a wonderful travelogue that weaves a great story with stunning photography. What inspired you to create this book, and how do you feel about the results?
Aw thank you for the kind words about my book. The inspiration for the idea–a travel guide for cat lovers filled with photos, personal stories, and some light travel intel from 20 places where cats are woven into the fabric of society and daily life–came about because whenever I am anywhere, no matter what I am doing (on a guided tour, with a press officer from a destination, whatever), the moment I see a cat on the street my focus shifts completely to her and to following the kitty, often into places that are far more interesting and vibrant than the most “famous” sites in a place. I’ve learned that cats can help be tour guides that get us into neighborhoods where real people live, eat, gather, play, talk. And they can be what bonds us to local people, too, giving us a shared interest and joy even when language acts as a barrier. We can laugh at the silliness of a cat together, and share in a moment. That’s so beautiful. And that’s how you truly experience a place. Anyway, hah, I had gotten back from my first visit to Istanbul during a cruise on which I was writing a story about aging for Good Housekeeping (old ship, going to old places, and reckoning with why we are so fascinated by old stuff–literally ancient rocks in a field in this case–and yet bemoan our own bodies for the audacity of growing old).
I tweeted the idea for Street Cats while on the sofa with my cats, watching soccer early on a weekend morning. Things just started to happen from that tweet and two years later, my book was published! The book is gorgeous, the publisher turned my words and photographs into a stunning hardback, but even with some great coverage (a full-page feature on me and the book in a Sunday Washington Post travel section), many podcast appearances, and dozens of events at bookstores and festivals, it wasn’t as successful as the publisher had hoped, so sadly, book two, which was about to be offered to me, died on the vine. I haven’t really talked about the crushing sadness of this publicly until now. I tried, I cared, but I feel like a failure.
5. Recently, you’ve expressed your strong opinions about magazines that charge a reader’s fee. What are your main concerns with this practice, which seems to be becoming more prevalent?
Well, a lot of this stems from the fact that there are too many bad actors in the indie lit space, scamming emerging writers out of money, playing on their hopes and dreams of being published. That is infuriating beyond belief, as is the lack of transparency in the indie lit space, but in general, I simply believe that writers should be paid to write, not pay to be read.
We don’t need to pay for services to “manage” submissions because email is free. I’m one person who just had 1000+ pieces of writing submitted to him in one day, via email, and it’s fine. I personally read and responded to everyone in exactly one month. We just don’t need to charge creative people for the privilege of having their stories and poems read. I also don’t believe in tip jars, crowdfunding, donations or anything like that. I’ve had people want to give me money and I’m like, um, the system is in place to do that already: pick out some books or issues, put them in your cart, and checkout. You’ll have sent me money and I’ll send you things to read. It’s simple. And that keeps Stanchion going, lets me pay contributors, pay authors, pay for the website, etc.
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Follow Jeff Bogle/Stanchion on X/Twitter at @stanchionzine and on Instagram at @stanchionzine.
Andrew Careaga 