Matteo L. Cerilli (he/him) is a transmasc author and activist specializing in speculative fiction for all ages. His debut YA horror novel Lockjaw follows a group of queer teens growing up in a community that doesn’t accept them. His activism work has included setting up gender care for trans students at York University, helping to found the Students for Queer Liberation—Tkaronto, and organizing with the No Pride in Policing Coalition.
We had the joy of talking with Matteo Cerilli to ask him more about Lockjaw.
Freedom? Nostalgia? What is it about a group of kids on bikes getting into—and out of—trouble that captures writers’ and readers’ imaginations?
I grew up in a suburb mostly made of lawns and parking lots—it was impossible to walk anywhere efficiently, so having a bike was my earliest memory of freedom. With that comes your first look at identity: as soon as you can ride off on your own and experience the world, you’re actually forced to decide who you are in the grand scheme. It’s incredibly daunting, especially as a little kid who often doesn’t have much power to change any of the scariness out there; when the streetlights come on, you have to go home. Being 11-12 is so systemically dehumanizing, uncomfortable, and terrifying… and yet you have to start building a real personality!
The next time I felt that was at 18 (suddenly I was supposed to know who I was going to be?), which is why I wanted to have a cast of both 11-year-olds and recent high school graduates. Teen readers have so much in common with both their younger siblings, and their younger selves. Even at 25 while I’m trying to figure out who I’m going to be as a “real adult,” I find myself thinking about my middle school self grappling with identity and the weight of the world for what felt like the first time. So yes, I think it’s fond nostalgia that makes us crave these stories, but part of Lockjaw is about cutting through that Instagram filter of pretending that everything was so much softer and easier and nicer back then. It might seem that way in retrospect, but in the moment, those problems were as big as our “grown-up” problems now. It’s so much more relatable and cathartic when we remember that. I think that’s what hooks the imagination more than anything: the reminder that we’re really not so different from kids on bikes, no matter how old we are. Cover of YA novel Lockjaw features four teens on bikes handing out in front of a hazy sunset.
Like many classic horror stories, Lockjaw is set in a small town. How would you describe Bridlington and what makes this small town so scary?
Bridlington is your typical “everywhere-ville”—it has a main street with shopping, and a corner store, and a motel, and a bunch of perfect little cul de sacs. That idea of “perfection” is always a bit unnerving. Nothing in nature is perfect; you have to artificially tweak and tweeze and snip. When we’re talking about perfect towns, this snipping means ignoring or shutting in anything that doesn’t fit the ideal. Anything too cookie-cutter feels like it has skeletons waiting in every closet… Bridlington has skeletons a-plenty.
The story revolves around a diverse crew of 11-year-old outcasts. Can you tell us more about the identities and representation in Lockjaw?
The story splits itself between Paz and her crew, and a few teen characters in town trying to ignore her monster hunt. Among the teen group, there’s Asher, an unhoused trans runaway who refuses to admit that he’s in over his head; Beetle, an autistic-coded Vietnamese genderqueer guy who left town as a kid to attend an alternative school, and is now back for just one summer before he runs far away from this hellscape; and Marcela, Paz’s “practical” sister trying to pick up the slack as the only other Latina girl in town by dating Caleb, the star citizen son of the police captain who harbours some disappointing secrets of his own.
But as for Paz and her friends, while they’re definitely coded as neurodivergent and queer, they don’t have established labels—it’s reflective of my own childhood. As someone born in ’99 (like Paz and her crew), I didn’t grow up knowing what “transgender” or “autistic” was, at least not in a way that ever felt relevant to me personally. I’m so grateful today’s kids can find labels that make them feel less alone, but in the years when Lockjaw is set, that’s not the norm yet. Instead, Paz and her crew are “different.”
Which of your characters is most like you?
I was completely blown away the first time I saw the final cover; Paz is dressed exactly how I was at that age. Of course, I was much quieter than Paz. All of my characters have a bit of me in them: Marcela inherits my eldest sister stress, Beetle’s coming out story shares a lot of similarities with mine, Asher’s fight with toxic masculinity is ripped from my own life, and even Caleb captures some whispers of my family. Writing a book is its own form of therapy—you’re really just facing yourself from every possible angle. If I had to pick someone, maybe it’d be Ben, Paz’s friend who’s afraid of Goosebumps and stims by shaking out his hands. That’s also taken from my own childhood.
Lockjaw has a lot to say about the kinds of horrors that surround us in real life. What do you hope teen readers take away from reading your book?
That we’re all responsible for caring for each other and building a better world, even if we’ve made mistakes. I set out to write realistic queer characters, which means they’ve all been through hardship one way or another, and they’re not exactly better for it. Some of them are selfish, or cruel, or ignorant, and it hurts the people around them. But I don’t believe in lost causes. Everyone can learn to do better, which these characters hopefully do (no spoilers here!). I hope teens really take that to heart. Not just to give grace to the people around them, but to themselves too. The system is built to make us give up on each other; the second we start believing in moral superiority and “good people and bad people,” we’re done for.
Follow Matteo Cirelli on Instagram: @matteolcerilli