He is the author of a collection of poetry, Crush, which won the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition in 2004, and is the editor of spork literary magazine. Siken received a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his book Crush was awarded the Lambda Literary Award for "Gay Men's Poetry" in 2005, and the Thom Gunn Award from The Publisher's Triangle. The 1991 death of his boyfriend influenced his writing of the book.