::Elizabeth Alexander & Taha Muhammad Ali at the Alley:: Well, if the intellects are to take over a day, might as well be Monday. Leave the killing brain cells to us the rest of the week. ELIZABETH ALEXANDER, whose dynamic work penetrates the African American experience, is a poet, essayist, and playwright. Winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers (one of the nation’s leading poetry prizes), she is the author of......

Remember when you were a little bitty Houstonist and someone would read to you at night and you could just lose yourself in the story, abandoning all other thoughts of the day? Well you can still do it now, you know. In fact, you might be all the more eager to shed your quotidian annoyances now that you're grown. Here are a few places to hear some stellar writers read from their work: Friday......