LMNL Featuring Té V. Smith, Derek Dirckx, Khalil Deka, & Giselle Linder!

Welcome to the LMNL Reading Series Featuring Té V. Smith, Derek Dirckx, Khalil Deka, & Giselle Linder!

Come join us at Twelve Mile Limit for a night of incredible performances by talented artists. Get ready to be blown away!

TÉ V. SMITH is a Nigerian-American educator, writer, and the founder of the Amù Primary schools in Nigeria and Kenya. Té also designed an SEL-based history curriculum, Colors of A Nation, to probe the dominant & counter-narratives of American history. His short fiction is published in the Dillydoun Review, Blavity, Griffel, Tin House, and other venues. Té was A Rhode Island Writers Colony Fellow, a Disney Plus Reimagine Tomorrow Writer in Residence, a Lambda Literary Fellow, and a Tunnel Vision Poetry Prize Awardee. He is most passionate about telling and supporting the stories of underrepresented communities. He lectures and teaches Creative Writing, Education Reform, Inner-Faith, and Healthy Masculinity workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad. Té lives in New Orleans, where he most likely can’t be found because he’s somewhere writing & revising a story or nestled between the stacks.

Originally from the great state of Minnesota, Derek Dirckx is a writer currently residing in the great state of Louisiana. He holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and teaches writing at Louisiana State University. His fiction has appeared in the Baltimore Review and elsewhere. He is, at this very moment, hard at work on his first novel.

Khalil Deka is a poet, researcher, and queer activist from Assam, India. They write on gender, sexuality, love, and identity politics. Their first collection of poetry in Assamese, (in their native language), "Andhar Kothalir Duwar Bhangi" was published in 2021. This collection was inspired by their lived experience as a trans non- binary person growing up in rural places in Assam, which is considered as a pioneer in Assamese queer literature. Their second collection of poetry "Queeror Kunu Dex Nai" is on its way. They are doing their PhD in Queer Climate Justice from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, NY.

Giselle Linder is an Australian-born poet currently based in Paris, France. Her debut poetry collection, "City Gothic", was released by England-based indie press Dark Thirty Poetry Publishing in 2023, and was followed by a second collection, titled "Are You Having a Good Time Yet?" in March 2025. She has been a featured guest poet at Wild Readings Brisbane, Paris Lit Up, Spoken Word Paris and the Circle Sessions Dublin, and her work has been included in various publications such as Querencia Press, Nowhere Girl Collective, The Hyacinth Review, Bread and Butter Magazine and Version Originale.

Host or Publisher lmnl lit