Grant Hier was appointed as the inaugural Poet Laureate of Anaheim in 2018. His long poem, Untended Garden: Histories and Reinhabitation in Suburbia, was awarded Prize Americana in 2014, published as a book by Poetry Press the following year, and subsequently nominated for both an American Book Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poetry collection The Difference Between was published in April of 2018, to which Similitude is a companion collection. A book of historical flash fiction, California Continuum: Migrations and Amalgamations, which was co-written with the Poet Laureate of Sequoia and Kings Canyon Parks, John Brantingham, is forthcoming in February, 2019. Grant has previously been awarded the Nancy Dew Taylor Prize for Literary Excellence in Poetry and the Kick Prize for poetry. His writing has been anthologized in such books as Only Light Can Do That (Rattling Wall/PEN Center USA), Monster Verse-Human and Inhuman Poems (Knopf/Everyman), Orange County: A Literary Field Guide (Heyday), LA Fiction Anthology (Red Hen), and John Fante: A Critical Gathering (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). In addition to writing, he is a musical artist, visual artist, and former graphic designer and art director. As a voice actor, he contributed to the audio book of George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2018 Audie Award for Audiobook of the year. Grant is a Full Professor at Laguna College of Art and Design where he teaches a variety of Liberal Arts classes, including creative writing. More at www.granthier.com