Brian Jay Stanley is an essayist and software developer in Asheville, North Carolina. His personal philosophical essays have been published or are forthcoming in The Antioch Review, North American Review, The Hudson Review, The Sun, Pleiades, The Dalhousie Review, The Laurel Review, Connecticut Review, and other magazines. They were selected as notable essays in The Best American Essays in 2006, 2010, and 2011, and have been anthologized in America Now (9th ed.), from Bedford/St. Martin's Press.

He received a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois and a master's degree in theology from Duke University.

Aphorisms and Paradoxes contains brief reflections on a variety of subjects.