Born into a military family in the early days of the Cold War, Mark Grinyer spent most of his childhood and youth following his father, an Air Force officer, to many different stations in the United States and overseas.  When his father finally retired from the military, the family moved to Riverside, California. He went to college at the University of California, Riverside, where he  began writing and publishing poetry.  After being drafted into the Army in 1969, he returned to the University for graduate school. and received a PhD in English and American Literature. He wrote his dissertation on the poetry of William Carlos William and developed a particular interest in the roles of poetry and poets in modern society, and in the use of scientific and natural scenes or images as vehicles for understanding our place in the modern world. He spent the next 25 years working as a technical editor and proposal specialist in the aerospace industry. After retiring in 2006, he returned to teaching for a few years at California State University, Fullerton, where he continued with his poetry and renewed his attempts to publish it in literary journals and books. He is currently retired, writing and living on the edge of the Cleveland National Forest in Southern California.