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Carrie Brownstein, Harry Crews, ‘Cooking With Poo,’ more book news

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Carrie Brownstein will write a memoir to be published by Riverhead Books; its title and publication date have not yet been announced. Brownstein, who started her creative career as the guitar player in Sleater-Kinney, currently plays with the band White Flag, which is on tour. The indie-rock renaissance woman also stars in the IFC satire ‘Portlandia,’ which she co-created with Fred Armisen. Maybe they’ll return to the did-you-read skit (above, with Brownstein in the crocheted hat) and add her book into the mix.

In the Rumpus, SoCal writer Rob Roberge has an essay about trying to teach creative writing to people who are on the edge. ‘[T]he kind of disruptive force in a classroom I’m talking about is not simply a ‘crazy’ person. I like crazy people. I am a crazy person....But/and, there are the truly unhinged students and they can be a disastrous/creepy/sometimes frightening influence in a classroom.’ What kind of crazy were they? Think teenage James Ellroy in a seminar room.

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Writer Harry Crews died Wednesday at age 76 in Gainsville, Fla. The author of the novels ‘A Feast of Snakes,’ ‘Car,’ ‘Scar Lover’ and the memoir ‘A Childhood: The Biography of a Place,’ Crews taught creative writing at the University of Florida — hopefully not to students as disruptive as Roberge’s. One definitely was not: that was Maud Newton, who wrote about what Crews taught her in the L.A. Times in 2009.

The Washington Post is closing the doors on its Political Bookworm blog. Steven Levinson will continue to edit nonfiction reviews for the paper, to write about books and publishing, and to tweet — even with blogging off his plate, sounds like he’ll be plenty busy.

Seattle has held its seventh-annual Edible Book Fair. Puns — ‘The Invisible Manwich’ — abound. Here’s a slideshow.

Speaking of unsettling combinations of books and food: English readers have selected the oddest book title of the year: ‘Cooking with Poo.’ It’s a cookbook by Saiyuud Diwon, a Thai chef. ‘Poo,’ which is Diwon’s nickname, is Thai for crab.

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— Carolyn Kellogg

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