Matthew Frye-Castillo is a writer, educator, and journalist based in Astoria, Queens, with roots in Southcentral Alaska and Los Angeles. He is the author of One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir (Cirque Press, 2021; reissued by Volupté Press, 2026), which follows his family’s survival through Alaska in an old Mustang with a single working headlight. He is currently at work on projects about karaoke and death, literary depictions of “gays who kill,” and the recovery of lost family archives — subjects bound together by a lasting interest in critical theory and unlikely friendships.
His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Lambda Literary, Epiphany, the Gay & Lesbian Review, River Teeth, the Paris Review Daily, the Lindenwood Review, Newtown Literary, and Worn in New York, which was featured in the Netflix docuseries Worn Stories. A former arts reporter for the Anchorage Press and arts editor for the Red Hook Star-Revue, he has also written for the Anchorage Daily News, ESPN, HuffPost, and Bushwick Daily. His creative work has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Mellon and Hertog Foundations, StoryBoard, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
At Lehman College, CUNY, Matthew is a CCE Lecturer of Professional Writing and Director of the Program for Professional Communications, where he has built courses on emerging media, LGBTQ+ literature, and entrepreneurship for writers. He has directed the LGBTQ+ Collective and now leads the college’s LGBTQ+ Literary series. Outside the classroom, he advises Native-owned firms on AI ethics and editorial strategy and has led studies on how college students actually use AI to write.
A proud MBA dropout, he holds an MFA from Hunter College and a publishing certificate from Columbia University, and studied at the University of Alaska Anchorage and Clark University. He lives in Astoria with his husband, Adam, and is quite good at figure skating.
Photo credit: Emil D. Cohen
Alaska shaped me.
Queens is home.
As a little boy, I could spend hours making scribbles on paper: pages of loops and lines that meant something to me long before they meant anything to anyone else. The impulse behind them has followed me ever since. I want to make myself legible, and I want to help other people do the same.
Writing is how I find out what I think. Editing is how I find out what someone else means. I’m the author of One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir, first published by Cirque Press in 2021 and reissued for its fifth anniversary by Volupté Press, the micropress I founded in 2026. Whether the manuscript is mine or someone else’s, the work is the same: listen closely, then help the page say it.
Journalism taught me to follow a question into someone else’s world. At the Anchorage Press and the Red Hook Star-Revue, where I served as arts editor, I covered artists, musicians, theaters, galleries, and everyday life in Alaska and New York. I still write criticism and essays, most recently on karaoke culture, literary depictions of “gays who kill,” and lost family archives.
In the classroom, I teach writing as a set of repeatable practices, not a list of rules. Sometimes those practices become actual tools, like an editorial desk for a small newsroom or a way for students to photograph a handwritten page and turn it into a conversation about their writing. After all, the right sentence, scene, or story can change how we see the world forever. Making writing legible, it turns out, is as much a design problem as a literary one.
Bios, headshots & interviews
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Short 23 words
Matthew Frye-Castillo is a queer Latine writer and editor from Alaska, living in Queens, and the author of One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir.
Medium 154 words
Matthew Frye-Castillo is a queer Latine writer, editor, and educator based in Astoria, Queens. Born in San Diego and raised in Southcentral Alaska, he is the author of One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir (Cirque Press, 2021; Volupté Press, 2026), which follows a family surviving Alaska in an old Mustang with one headlight. His essays, fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in Lambda Literary, the Paris Review Daily, the Gay & Lesbian Review, Epiphany, and Newtown Literary, and his story in Worn in New York was featured in the Netflix docuseries Worn Stories. As a journalist, he has written for the Anchorage Daily News, HuffPost, and the Anchorage Press, and served as arts editor of the Red Hook Star-Revue. He has received fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Hertog and Mellon Foundations, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He teaches at Lehman College, CUNY, where he directs the Program for Professional Communications.
Long 441 words
Matthew Frye-Castillo is a queer Latine writer, editor, journalist, and educator based in Astoria, Queens. Born in San Diego, with roots in Los Angeles and Southcentral Alaska, he spent hours as a boy filling pages with scribbles, and the impulse to make himself legible has shaped his work ever since.
He is the author of One Headlight: A Son’s Memoir, which follows a mother and son surviving Alaska in an old Mustang with one working headlight. First published by Cirque Press in 2021 and reviewed by Kirkus Reviews, the book was reissued in 2026 by Volupté Press in a fifth-anniversary edition with a new preface and a foreword by Dr. Jessica Yood. His essays, fiction, poetry, and criticism have appeared in Lambda Literary, the Paris Review Daily, the Gay & Lesbian Review, Epiphany, Understory, Newtown Literary, and Prism & Pen. His contribution to Emily Spivack’s Worn in New York became part of the Netflix docuseries Worn Stories, where he talked jockstraps and queer culture. His recent work explores karaoke culture, literary depictions of “gays who kill,” lost family archives, and the unlikely debate between drag queen Lushious Massacr and economist Milton Friedman.
As a journalist, he spent three years at the Anchorage Press and served as arts editor of the Red Hook Star-Revue, covering artists, musicians, theaters, and everyday life in Alaska and New York. His reporting has also appeared in the Anchorage Daily News, HuffPost, Chance Magazine, and Bushwick Daily.
He directs the Program for Professional Communications at Lehman College, CUNY, where he teaches business writing, editing, creative nonfiction, and LGBTQ+ literature. He has also taught at Hunter College, led a publishing workshop at Columbia University, and presented on AI-mediated writing at academic conferences. Alongside teaching, he builds tools for writers, editors, and students, including an editorial workspace for a small newsroom.
Through his editorial practice, Personal Editor, he works with authors, executives, and leadership teams on manuscripts, proposals, speeches, and other writing that has to land. In 2026 he founded Volupté Press, a literary micropress devoted to memoirs and overlooked classics, including E.F. Benson’s Queen Lucia with an introduction by Dr Sasha Garwood. He is at work on a novel, Ligatures, along with several screenplays and plays.
His work has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Hertog and Mellon Foundations, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and a 2026 StoryStudio Fellowship. He holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Hunter College, a publishing certificate from Columbia University, and a BA in English literature and psychology from the University of Alaska Anchorage. He lives in Astoria with his husband, Adam, and is quite good at figure skating.
Headshots
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In conversation
At Astoria Bookshop with Joe OkonkwoA virtual conversation about One Headlight and Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck.Watch on YouTube →- An interview with Pine Hills Review ↗
On memoir, memory, and writing a life.
Read · Alex J. Tunney · 2021 - Caprioli drives through Alaska with ‘One Headlight’ ↗
A profile in The Riverdale Press.
Read · Ethan Stark-Miller · 2021 - Two first books by young Alaska writers ↗
A conversation on Alaska Public Media’s Hometown Alaska.
Listen · Kathleen McCoy · 2021