Writer from Alaska & California, living in Queens. One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir is available for pre-order November 1.
Yours truly in the parking lot otw to see Sheryl Crow
Image Credit: Genetics
Matthew Frye-Castillo is the author of One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir, published by Cirque Press (2021) and reissued by Volupté Press (2026). Born in San Diego and raised in Southcentral Alaska, he is a CCE Lecturer of Professional Writing and Director of the Program for Professional Communications at Lehman College, City University of New York.
Matthew is a multidisciplinary writer who has published creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry; his stage and screenplays have followed an LGBTQ+ retirement community in Florida, unpaid interns at a famous magazine, and star-crossed lovers in Alaska. He blogs about literature at Word After Word, is at work on a novel, and hopes to land a double axel one day.
His forthcoming collection, Unpassing: Essays on Race, Family, and the Archive, looks at cultural memory and interrupted inheritances through a box of found documents, DNA tests, and the politics of naming.
One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir
One Headlight is a coming-of-age memoir about a mother and son driving through the 2002 St. Patrick's Day storm with one headlight, and about everything that storm comes to stand for: growing up gay in an evangelical Alaska household, the slow work of self-discovery, and the pull between the place that raised you and the life you go on to build. Written with humor and unflinching candor, it's a book about the people who see us before we can see ourselves.
Interviews & Profiles
The Riverdale Press by Ethan Stark-Miller
NPR’s Hometown Alaska by Kathleen McCoy
Pine Hills Review by Alex J. Tunney
A&U Magazine by Ruby Corner
University of Alaska by Matt Jardin
Conversation with Joe Okonkwo at Astoria Bookshop
Reviews & Praise
“[An] inspirational story of resilience and fortitude” —Chelsea News New York
“An affecting and surprising remembrance about the responsibilities of parents and children.” —Kirkus
“Like no other book I have read. It will entertain you as it crushes you.” —Martha Amore, author of In the Quiet Season & co-editor of Building Fires in the Snow
“Depictions of working-class, poverty-level Alaska [that] counterbalance the usual tropes of Alaska as a sublime wilderness.” —Anchorage Daily News
“Quirky humor, bright language, and sharp emotional insight.” —Joe Okonkwo, author of Jazz Moon
“[A heartfelt coming-of-age memoir] …. One Headlight well illuminates the necessary pain of separating from our mothers to become who we are—and the way we continually return to them, and to who we were, to understand who that is.” — Red Hook Star-Revue
“More than another coming-of-age story. It is a love letter to his mother, Abby, a lively woman, who navigates the world with humor and humility, doing her best with the hand she was dealt, both for herself and for the son she so clearly adores.” — Lucian Childs, author of Dreaming Home
“A beautiful, moving queer coming-of-age memoir set in Alaska with a narrative voice that is funny, sensitive and emotionally sharp. For fans of Garrard Conley, Garth Greenwell and Brandon Taylor.” — Naheed Phiroze Patel, author of Mirror Made of Rain
Essays & Fiction
Finding Héctor, Little Patuxent Review
All That Beauty, OPOSSUM
On continually learning from Audre Lorde, Transformative Learning in the Humanities
How Books Shaped My Life as a Gay Escort, Prism & Pen
On Four Latine Authors Named Daniel, part 1 & part 2, Epiphany: A Literary Journal
Lord Knows, Chicken Soup for the Soul
I Went to Dartmouth, Newtown Literary
The Hat You Save May Be Your Own, Cirque Journal
How Do You Say a Word, Understory
Writing, Understory
Etta James, Best Emerging Poets 2018
Criticism
The Right to Slay: On the ‘Gays Who Kill’ Subgenre, Gay & Lesbian Review
When Silence Speaks Volumes: Jeannie Vanasco on a Complex Mother-Daughter Relationship, River Teeth
Edgar Gomez’s Intricate and Emotive Memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, Lambda Literary Review
This Town Sleeps Is an Emotionally Wrought Tale of Community and Redemption, Lambda Literary Review
Reporting
New York’s Most Popular Writing Method You’ve Never Heard Of, Red Hook Star-Revue
The Persistence of Morgan O’Hara, Red Hook Star-Revue
The Hidden Histories of the Mary A. Whalen, Red Hook Star-Revue
Anything Goes at Mama D’s, Bushwick Daily
Stage & Screen
Screen
Over the Rainbow
A half-hour comedy about five seniors in Florida battling to keep their LGBTQ+ retirement home open.
Listen to the Band
Hour-long limited series drama about a mother and son following their artistic dreams; based on the lives of Bette Nesmith Graham and Michael Nesmith of The Monkees.
Walking Down In Hand
Feature film following two queer teenagers in Anchorage, Alaska who are not supposed to fall in love.
Conversion
Stage
Russian Dressing
A 70-minute comedy about a group of unpaid interns at a famous magazine who decide it’s best not to unionize.
Dirty Rotten Twink
A 100-minute dramedy following the decades-long friendship of five queer people who met while working at a sex club in their early 20s.
RUN-HIDE-FIGHT
A 70-minute drama about a college classroom during an active shooter drill.
master-slave
An 80-minute comedy asking what the Greek Gods will do now that their jobs have been automated.
Web
Hire Ed
A six-part comedic web series featuring an earnest adjunct whose interviews for a history professorship tend to implode.