About

Brendan Tapley’s work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Slate, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine, the Daily Beast, the Chicago Tribune, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Bust, Carolina Quarterly, and on National Public Radio, among others. He received an MFA degree from Emerson College, and his writing has earned several fellowships and awards. He is currently at work on a book.

“Consider the saguaro flowering against a hallucinatory plane of nothing but quicksilver mirages, or the vermilion flycatcher submitting to a sere, sedimentary wind.”

—from NPR’s On Being

Essays

Spanning subjects as varied as masculinity, politics, psychology, arts, culture, family, and the life of the mind, Tapley’s words illuminate the ideas and emotions behind, beneath, and beyond the apparent or expected.

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How Downton Abbey Mended My Broken Heart

Slate
The popular series offers a rare exploration, and reassurance, of the nobility in a man’s pursuit of love. Even—or especially—when it fails.

Between Perseverance and Surrender

On Being
At desire’s crossroads, whether to persevere or to surrender often determines the story of our lives.

The Guy Code

The Boston Globe

“The downward nod (a male gesture of respect) had taken a year to become the upward nod (a male gesture of friendship).”

THE MARTYR PROBLEM AMONG NONPROFITS

The Chronicle of Philanthropy

“Browbeaten and marginalized, many nonprofit leaders speak only to their choirs, believing only they can understand, which further alienates their work from the common purpose they purport to serve.”

The Patriots Made a Man of Me, in a Manner of Speaking

The New York Times

“Still, a gay guy and straight woman? C’mon, you’re thinking. But emotionally we were already entwined, and it proved not difficult at all to stretch into the physical.”