Book notes

LOS ANGELES -- Novelist Elmore Leonard will receive PEN USA's lifetime achievement award at a December ceremony.

Leonard, 83, has written more than 40 westerns, crime novels and mysteries, including "The Bounty Hunters," "Road Dogs" and "Cuba Libre."

Many of his books -- notably "Out of Sight," "Get Shorty" and "Be Cool" -- have been made into films.

Past recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award include Ray Bradbury, Woody Allen, Betty Friedan and Gore Vidal.

PEN USA is a Los Angeles-based professional writers organization.

The group's 19th Annual Literary Awards Festival will be held at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Dec. 2.

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NEW YORK -- Ian Frazier is a funny man. Officially.

The author and frequent New Yorker contributor won the Thurber Prize for American Humor for his lighthearted book on parental guidance, "Lamentations of the Father." Frazier, who in 1997 received the inaugural Thurber award, will receive $5,000, prize organizers said.

Other previous Thurber winners include David Sedaris, Christopher Buckley and Jon Stewart and the co-authors of "America (The Book)." The prize is named for the late humorist and cartoonist James Thurber and is sponsored by Thurber House, a nonprofit literary center based in Thurber's former residence in Columbus, Ohio.

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NEW YORK -- Wyclef Jean is working on a memoir.

The solo star and former frontman for The Fugees is collaborating with Rolling Stone writer Anthony Bozza on a book -- currently untitled -- to be published by It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Financial terms weren't disclosed, and a release date hasn't been set.