Subtexts: CHOKE book launch: Ray Filar in convo w' Katie Cruz & Nora Padilla
When: Monday, November 30, 2026, 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Where: BLOC Cinema, ArtsOne Buildong, Mile End
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Book launch of Choke, a dyke hooker revenge fantasy novella, in which two sex workers fall in love and go on a ruthless murder spree.
Author Ray Filar in conversation with Katie Cruz and Nora Padilla.
Come join the conversation over snacks and drinks.
About the book:
When Leila meets Silvia during a booking with Silvia's longtime client, the infatuation is instant. Silvia is older, glamorous, charming, and has been working for a lot longer than Leila, who is still new to sex work. Later that evening the two run into each other at a hotel bar, and after a messy night of drugs and sex, begin a romantic relationship that takes a turn when they start murdering clients together.
Traversing the spaces of queer East London and the corporate city, Choke is a propulsive and sexy revenge fantasy mash up of black comedy, psychological (un)realism and literary essay that bends tropes and explores the essence of fantasy, from BDSM and kink to wealth and class to bodies and transness. A wild, fun, smart, and pulpy novella that transforms literary traditions and elevates queer writing.
About the participants:
Ray Filar is a writer, theatre-maker and live artist based in London. They write fiction, plays, and creative non-fiction about work, sex, drugs and violence.
They hosted the feminist podcast Killjoy FM and were co-creative director of a queer, Jewish, anti-Zionist theatre company Homos and Houmous. They have created work for stages and starred in Bruce LaBruce’s feature film The Visitor.
Nora Padilla (she/they) is a working-class trans mestiza dyke writer, educator, and activist. A lifelong fronterista, she draws on experiences of marginalisation, migration, nightlife, and sex work to make work that explores the troubled borderlands of place, race, spirituality, gender, sexuality, and class.
Katie Cruz is a socio-legal researcher of gendered work & workplace issues. Cruz combines doctrinal analysis, empirical data & feminist/Marxist theory. Her legal research on sex work focuses on a labour approach. Cruz also works with national & International organisations on a labour approach to sex work. Publications include 'Materialism, Sex Work & the Law: Doing Feminist Legal Theory Differently' and ‘The Sex Worker Rights Movement and Trade Unionism in Europe’ (authored with Tess Herrmann).