Richard Siken

His later books include War of the Foxes (2015) and I Do Know Some Things (2025). For I Do Know Some Things, Siken was a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry and the 2025 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry.

• Name — Richard Siken • Born — 1967 • Birthplace — New York, New York, U.S. • Occupation — * Poet • painter • filmmaker • Education — University of Arizona • Notable Works — Crush War of the Foxes I Do Know Some Things • Awards — Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition (2004) Lambda Literary Award Thom Gunn Award National Book Award for Poetry finalist (2025) • Website — richard-siken.com

Siken was born in New York City in 1967 and moved to Tucson, Arizona, when he was two years old. He received a BA in psychology from the University of Arizona before entering its graduate creative writing program, where he later earned an MFA in poetry. Before publishing his first book, Siken worked as a social worker for developmentally disabled adults; during his graduate-student years, he also worked with patients navigating serious mental illness. Around the time Crush was accepted, he was working two 20-hour weekend shifts so that he could devote the rest of the week to writing. In 2001, he and Drew Burk founded Spork Press, a Tucson-based poetry journal and small press whose hand-bound issues developed a DIY reputation. Siken wrote and revised Crush over a period of 15 years. During that time, he left social work for restaurant jobs in Tucson; in 1998, he moved to New York for less than a year before returning to Tucson. Siken's debut collection, Crush, was selected by Louise Glück as the 2004 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets and was published by Yale University Press in 2005. Siken has said that the death of his boyfriend in 1990 shaped the book. Alongside the book's prizes, Siken has received a Pushcart Prize, two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, two Lannan residencies, and a Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. His second collection, War of the Foxes, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2015, a decade after Crush. The collection was described as a "painterly" and more fabular follow-up to Crush. A 2025 Poetry Foundation profile also reproduced paintings from his 2015 series Ten Men in Seven Suits. In 2019, Siken had a stroke. His first poem published afterward, "Real Estate", appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day in December 2020. His third collection, I Do Know Some Things, was published in 2025. Writing in The Nation, Yvonne Kim described the book as "plainly autobiographical" and noted that its 77 prose poems follow Siken's recovery, including his temporary loss of speech, memory, and mobility after the stroke. Kim also reported that Siken turned to prose-poem blocks and initially composed much of the book by dictation after line breaks intensified his post-stroke disorientation. Siken lives in Tucson.

• Crush (Yale University Press, 2005) • War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015) • I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025)