Grant Hardy is professor of history and religious studies and former director of the humanities program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He earned his B.A. in ancient Greek in 1984 from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in Chinese language and literature from Yale University in 1988. Having written, cowritten, or edited several books in the fields of history, humanities, and religious texts as literature, Hardy is known for literary studies of the Book of Mormon.